And on rising from his knees he felt that his duty was to seek out the sinful couple. But how to speak to them of their sins? The sin was not their's. He was the original wrong-doer. If Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne were to die and lose their immortal souls, how could the man who had been the cause of the loss of two immortal souls, save his own, and the consequences of his refusal to marry Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne seemed to reach to the very ends of Eternity.
He walked to his uncle's with great swift steps, hardly seeing his parishioners as he passed them on the road.
"Is Father Stafford in?"
"Yes, your reverence."
"Uncle John, I have come to consult you."
The priest sat huddled in his arm-chair over the fire, and Father Maguire noticed that his cassock was covered with snuff, and he noticed the fringe of reddish hair about the great bald head, and he noticed the fat inert hands. And he noticed these things more explicitly than he had ever noticed them before, and he wondered why he noticed them so explicitly, for his mind was intent on a matter of great spiritual importance.
"I have come to ask you," Father Tom said, "regarding the blame attaching to a priest who refuses to marry a young man and a young woman, there being no impediment of consanguinity or other."
"But have you refused to marry anyone because they couldn't pay you your dues?"
"Listen, the church is falling."
"My dear Tom, you should not have refused to marry them," he said, as soon as his soul-stricken curate had laid the matter before him.