"But the priest would not reveal what he heard in the confession?" I said.
"Mrs. Sheridan didn't die that night, not till the end of the week; and the neighbours heard her talking about the child that she buried, and then they all knew what the white thing was that had been seen by the roadside. And the night that the priest left her he saw the white thing standing in front of him; and if he hadn't been a priest he would have dropped down dead. But he knew well enough that it was the unbaptised child, and he took some water from the bog-hole and dashed it over it, saying, "I baptise thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."
The driver told his story like one saying his prayers, and he seemed to have forgotten that he had a listener.
"And the ghost hasn't been seen again?" I said.
"No, not that I know of."
"I don't like your story," I said. "I like the story about Julia Cahill better."
"Well, they're both true; one's as true as the other; and Julia and Margaret are in America. Once a woman is wake she must go to America."
"It must have been a great shock to the priest."
"Faith it was, sir, to meet an unbaptised child on the roadside, and the child the only bastard that was ever born in the parish,—so Tom Mulhare says, and he's the oldest man in the county of Mayo."
"It was altogether a very queer idea, this playhouse."