"What do you want here?" I gently said.
"What do I want here? 'T is a quare question for a priest to be afther asking. What did the poor crature want when she wint to a bigger man dan you, and she wasn't turned away aither?"
"Yes, Nance; but she repented and loved Christ, and was prepared to die rather than sin again."
"And how do you know but I'm the same? Do you know more than the God above you?—and He is my witness here to-night before His Blessed and Holy Son that all hell-fire won't make me fall again. Hell-fire, did I say?" Her voice here sunk into a low whisper. "It isn't hell-fire I dread, but His face and yours."
I stooped down and lifted her gently. The simple kindness touched the broken vase of her heart, and she burst into an agony of passionate tears.
"Oh, wirra! wirra! if you had only said that much to me three months ago, what you'd have saved me. But you'd the hard word, Father, and it drove me wild to think that, as you said, I wasn't fit to come and mix with the people at Mass. And many and many a night in the cowld and hunger, I slept there at the door of the chapel; and only woke up to bate the chapel door, and ask God to let me in. But sure His hand was agin me, like yours, and I daren't go in. And sometimes I looked through the kayhole, to where His heart was burnin', and I thought He would come out, when no one could see Him, and spake to me; but no! no! Him and you were agin me; and then the chapel woman 'ud come in the cowld of the mornin', and I would shlink away to my hole agin?"
"Speak low, Nance," I whispered, as her voice hissed through the darkness. "The men will hear you!"
"They often heard worse from me than what I am saying to-night, God help me! 'T isn't the men I care about, nor their doings. But whin the young girls would crass the street, les' they should come near me, and the dacent mothers 'ud throw their aprons over their childres' heads, les' they should see me, ah! that was the bitter pill. And many and many a night, whin you wor in your bed, I stood down on dem rocks below, with the say calling for me, and the hungry waves around me and there was nothin' betune me and hell but that—"
She fumbled in her bosom and drew out a ragged, well-worn scapular with a tiny medal attached, and kissed it.
"And sure I know if I wint with 'em, I should have to curse the face of the Blessed and Holy Mary forever, and I said then, 'Never! Never!' and I faced the hard world agin."