'No one of any importance,' responded her son, carelessly. 'An old busybody--a shoemaker, I think, or a baker. Sure it was an accident, for George meant only to pink the spalpeen, and his sword went in too far--a miscalculation. Do you know, mother, that there'll soon be no end to the insolence of these ruffians? There's a report at the Castle that that crazy idiot Tone, to whom you were always much too kind, has succeeded in persuading the French to take up his cudgels. He'll dance the Kilmainham minuet, as the saying is, take my word for it, and serve him right; but Lord Camden really thinks it's serious. He talked with such mystery of plots last evening, of some scheme for attacking Dublin, that I thought his excellency was having a joke with us, till he said if things go on as they are going, there'll be nothing for it but to proclaim martial law.' My lady meditated for a time, reviewing this intelligence. 'Then these United Irish did not intend to be mere wind-bags?' she thought, and my Lord Camden was beginning to be afraid of them. Her common-sense told her that if, in a tussle, they got even for a moment the upper hand, their vengeance would fall heavily upon the perpetrators of such reckless escapades as that which Shane had just narrated. At any rate, it was not good to give them such food for complaint. My lady's caste prejudices blinded her to the fact that when half-a-dozen youths (even blue-blood ones) set on a single man and slay him, the act is no better than murder, though they are content to deplore it for a minute as an accident. There was no doubt left in her mind that Doreen's advice had been of the very best. She must even go to Ennishowen, however great the pain might be to herself in the revival of unpleasant memories. So, shaking her head, she remarked: 'Dear Shane! in '45 the Scotch rebels advanced within a hundred miles of London. If 5,000 ragged Highlanders are capable of that, why should not the French army march on Dublin? Lord Clare spoke to me yesterday on the subject of the yeomanry. It seems that the Privy Council expect you to undertake this district.' 'I should like that!' Shane said. 'It would not be wise, though,' returned his mother, quietly. 'The aristocracy will have a difficult game to play if these silly people really aim at violence. The executive will have brought it on themselves, and it's only fair that they should get out of their own difficulties in their own way. In '82, when your father and I both wore the uniform, the case was different. Landlord and tenant were united, as lord and servant of the soil, against a foreigner who had maltreated both. Things have changed since then. The position of the nobles is different. They have become Anglicised. Much of their interest is English. Yet it would be best for them not too openly to join the foreigner in coercing their own tenants--at least, not just now.'