the London
streets on his way to the Palace, the citizens ran to their doors to
stare at the redoubtable Irish rebel with his train of galloglasses at
his heels--huge bareheaded fellows clad in saffron shirts, their huge
naked axes swung over their shoulders, their long hair streaming behind
them, their great hairy mantles dangling nearly to their heels. So
attended, and in such order, Shane presented himself before the queen,
amid a buzz, as may be imagined, of courtly astonishment. Elizabeth
seems to have been equal to the situation. She motioned Shane, who had
prostrated himself, clansman fashion upon the floor, to rise, "check'd
with a glance the circle's smile," eyeing as she did so, not without
characteristic appreciation, the redoubtable thews and sinews of this
the most formidable of her vassals.

Her appreciation, equally characteristically, did not hinder her from
taking advantage of a flaw in his safe-conduct to keep Shane fuming at
her Court until he had agreed to her own terms. When at last he was
allowed to return home it was with a sort of compromise of his claim. He
was not to call himself Earl of Tyrone--a distinction to which, in
truth, he seems to have attached little importance--but he was allowed
to be still the O'Neill, with the additional title of "Captain of
Tyrone." To which the wits of the Court added--

"Shane O'Neill, Lord of the North of Ireland;
Cousin of St. Patrick. Friend of the Queen of England;
Enemy of all the world besides."

Shane and his galloglasses went home, and for some two years he and the
Irish Government left one another comparatively alone. He was supreme
now in the North, and ruled his own subjects at his own pleasure and
according to his own rude fashion. Sussex made another attempt not long
after to poison him in a gift of wine, which all but killed him and his
entire household, which still included the unhappy "Countess" and her
yet more unhappy husband Calvagh O'Donnell, whom Shane kept securely
ironed in a cell at the bottom of his castle. The incident did not add
to his confidence in the Queen's Government, or incline him to trust
himself again in their hands, which, all things considered, was hardly
surprising.

That in his own wild way Shane kept the North in order even his enemies
admitted. While the East and West of Ireland were distracted with feuds,
and in the South Ormond and Desmond were wasting one another's country
with unprecedented fe