Shane started up with a fierce glare. Everybody's chance arrows seemed winged to stick into his flanks. But he saw nothing in the giant's flat, round visage but an engaging air of humour and unguarded openness. What a good-natured face! Shane, weaker than his mother, yearned for sympathy and consolation; the secret she had carried so long with heroic fortitude ate into his softer fibre, and devoured him. He was at his small wits' end to know how to act. Cassidy's warm heart and kindly friendship might perchance suggest something. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings wisdom has come ere now. Acting on the impulse, Shane, with maudlin tears, swore his dear friend to solemn secrecy, and amidst a coruscation of cries and curses, blurted out the story which we wot of. 'What a cruel, cruel world it was!' he wailed, 'and what a bitter fate was his! He would certainly come to be a beggar--would be thrown out upon the world an outcast, he, who was not fitted to battle with it--for my lady was very queer in her ways, would be certain to tell Terence some day, just as she had told him. Why had she ever told him? wicked and unnatural mother to cause him such harrowing grief! Why was not Terence hanged? Why didn't they send him to Fort George? Once taken out of sight, the chances of my lady's blabbing would be lessened.' Cassidy sat listening to his rambling lamentations, with his china-blue eyes staring vacantly; then hummed to himself the words of the old song while his nimble brain was working: 'A jackdaw noble, glittering in the plumes Of the old race, whose honours he assumes!' 'My lady--my lady! It's always your mother ye're bothering about,' he said presently. 'Sure, your lordship's not tied to my lady's apron-string!' But Shane's babble, once set going, was not to be stemmed by pertness. He proceeded to unfold all her suggestions, mingled with his own doubts and hopes and fears; and as he talked on, new ideas sprang into shape, which hitherto had lain indistinct and dormant. He told of Doreen and her fortune, and how he would like to marry her if he could get rid of her directly afterwards--of how fortunate it was that he had sold his parliamentary interest so well--of how Terence had rebuked him on that subject, and what a crackbrained lunatic he was--girt round with old-fashioned prejudice--beset with starched quirks and rubbish. Cassidy's eyes twinkled, for he detected a glittering piece of wadding which would suit his nest right well--a precious piece of wadding made of revenge and self-interest interwoven--a rare piece of wadding which should be his if craft could win it.