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150 After a week Cormac returned. Shiana's house was the first he visited. Shiana came out to meet him just as he had gone to meet John Kittach that other day.

"Well!" said Shiana.

"Three of them have been hanged," said Cormac. "Sheeghy, or whatever his name is, escaped. For all our speed we failed to overtake them until we reached the city. I went at once to the King's men, where I was well known, and I told my story. You never saw people so much astonished as they were. 'Why,' said they, 'a man came here a while ago and told us that same story, and showed us three of the thieves, and we arrested them at once, and probably they will be hanged to-morrow. He said that they were not the most guilty, but the man who was their leader, and the leader of more of their sort in Munster, a man named Shiana—a man who had been manufacturing false coin for a long time. And by the same token, that it was generally known in the district that he was in abject poverty until within the last five or six years, and that now he was the richest man in Munster, or perhaps in Ireland. And, said they, 'there is an order from the King to prepare an armed force to go and seize upon that Shiana, whoever he is, and to bring him here in custody.' 'Where is the man who told that story?' said I. 'He is here within,' said they. We went in. There was not a trace of him. They ran in all directions in search of him. He was not to be found any more than if the ground had swallowed him. 'Where are the other three?' said I. 'In the jail,' said they. 'Let us see them and question them,' said I. We went in and questioned them, each separately. The