Doctor Francis Mangan, driving his car at something even more than his usual high rate of speed, to the Parochial House, a mile or so from the town of Cluhir, what time the sun's last rays were falling upon the Druid stone on Cnochán an Ceoil Sidhe, would have been far from pleased had he seen what the sun then saw. On their knees by the Tober an Sidhe, Larry and Christian were looking into the tiny cave in which the fairy water rose, and were giving each to each their plighting word, the old word that they had known since they were children:
"While water stands in Tubber an shee,
My heart in your hands, your heart in me,"
and, observing scrupulously the prescribed rite, were drinking a mouthful of the water, each from the other's hand.
Dr. Mangan would probably have said that it was all children's nonsense, and that it was easier to break a promise than to keep it, but it may be asserted with tolerable certainty that he would not have been pleased.
He was a strong and able driver, and his big car whirled up Father Greer's neat and narrow drive, holding undeviatingly the crown of the high-cambered track, and stopped dead at the front door of the Parochial House.
That Spirit of the Nation to whom allusion has occasionally been made in these pages, was by now well accustomed to the discouragement that she had ever received from the two young lovers whose betrothal she had been powerless to forbid. She had fled from the benign fairy influences of the Tober an Sidhe; but now, full of hope, she was hovering with wide-spread wings over the Parochial House, and, as its door was opened by Father Greer's elderly and ugly housekeeper, the Spirit folded her wings and slipped past her, as by a familiar path, into the priest's sitting-room.
Father Greer was "inside," the elderly and ugly housekeeper said; "would the Doctor sit in the parlour a minute and he'd come down?"
The Doctor "sat" as requested, in the parlour, noting, as he had often noted before, its arid asceticism, wondering how any man could stand the life of a priest, respecting the power that could enable a man to dispense with all the things that, in his opinion—which, by the way, he pronounced "oping-en"—made life worth living.