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60 He took the rent and went off, and he was very much vexed and angered, for he had promised the place that very morning to somebody else, for a good bribe.

"There!" said Shiana, as he went home, "if it gave him work to do to destroy the good of my shilling, let him have more work now to destroy the good of the twenty pounds. I think it will be no harm for me to leave that business between himself and the widow."

He arrived home and went to work. Very soon Michael was in after him, and he went to work. No one spoke for the rest of the day, and nothing was to be heard there but the soft whistling of the men, the long, heavy breathing of Shiana, the tapping of the little hammers, and the drawing and tightening of the waxed thread.

When Michael went home that night, his mother told him what Shiana had said when he was giving her the money, that he said it was for the Saviour's sake he was giving it to her. They were both surprised, for they had never thought there was much piety about Shiana.

Michael went out in the evening and he told it to another boy. It was not long before it was spread far and wide all over the district. Grey Dermot heard it. The bailiff heard it. Sive heard it.

"Dad," said Sive, "did you hear what Shiana did lately?"

"No, I didn't, and I don't care."

"Well, dad, we thought he had sense."

"Why, what has he done?" said Dermot.

"He has done a silly thing,—what he never failed to do," said she.