Whether, however, Roderick St. Amande--who was named after his grandfather, known as Rich Roderick of Dumfries---would ever live to come into his patrimony, or what remained of it, was a very much questioned subject. For the youth, who was some two years older than I, though not a wit bigger, if so big, had already taken to the most dreadful courses and, young as he was, might sometimes be seen reeling tipsy about the streets of Dublin (in which city his father thought fit to generally keep him); sometimes squabbling and rioting with the watch at nights, and sometimes leering over the blinds of the coffee-houses and wine clubs at any comely girl who happened to be passing up or down the streets. Moreover, I suppose, because since my birth he had always regarded me as an interloper who had come in between him and the future peerages of St. Amande and Amesbury, as, had I never been born, he must have eventually succeeded to them, he had always treated me with great cruelty so long as it was in his power to do so. When I was little better than a baby and he an urchin he saw fit to purloin or destroy the toys given me by my mother and my reckless and unhappy father; because I loved a terrier which a tenant had given me as a pup, that unfortunate creature was found drowned in a pool shortly after Roderick had been seen in the neighbourhood, and there were countless other ill treatments which he pleased to practise towards me. And at the time when I was consigned to O'Rourke by my father, who, in his then bemused state, probably did think that he was only secreting me for a while without dreaming of the harm to be attempted on me, this young villain, as I afterwards knew, was one of the prime instigators of that ruffian to make away with me. And, to conclude, when it was known that I had escaped from O'Rourke's hands he it was who, either on his own behalf or on that of his father, raised the hue and cry upon me until, when my own father lay a-dying in his garret, they saw fit to shift their tactics and give out that I was dead, which both father and son would have been consumedly rejoiced to have me. Now, Oliver Quin knew all this and accordingly hated him as much as he loved me, and he knew also of the young man's habits, of his love for the bottle and for bottle-songs, of his revellings and reelings in the streets by nights and in the early mornings, sometimes in the company of Considine and sometimes in that of worse almost than he; and he formed his plans accordingly when approached by O'Rourke. Those plans were no less, as doubtless you have ere now perceived or guessed, than to take a great revenge on this youth for all his and his father's transgressions towards me, and, in fact, to ship him off to Virginia in the Dove instead of me and in my place.