The Bishop listened to the blind woman's garrulous tongue with a downcast head and a look of pain, and said, in a subdued voice, as he put his hand on the wooden latch of the vestry door:
"It is not for me to laugh at you, Kerry, woman. All night long I have myself been tortured by an uneasy feeling, which would not be explained or yet be put away. But let us say no more of such mysteries. There are dark places that we may never hope to penetrate. Let it content us if, in God's mercy and His wisdom, we can see the step that is at our feet."
So saying, the Bishop turned about and passed in at the door. Kerry and her husband went into the chapel at the west porch.
"It's just an ould angel he is," whispered Kerry, reaching up to Hommy's ear, as they went by Will-as-Thorn.
"Aw, yes, yes," said Hommy-beg, "a rael ould archangel, so he is."
And still the bells rang for service of Christmas morning.
Inside the chapel the congregation was larger than common. There was so much hand-shaking and "taking of joy" to be gone through in the aisles and the pews that Christmas morning that it was not at first observed—except by malcontents like Billy the Gawk and Jabez Gawne, to whom the wine of life was mostly vinegar—when the hour for beginning the service had come and gone. The choir in the west gallery had taken their places on either side of Will-as-Thorn's empty seat over the clock, with the pitch-pipe resting on the rail above it, and opening their books, they faced about for gossip. Then the bell stopped, having rung some minutes longer than was its wont; the whispering was hushed from pew to choir, and only the sound of the turning of the leaves of many books disturbed the silence a moment afterward.
The Bishop entered the chancel, and while he knelt to pray, down like corn before a south wind went a hundred heads on to the book-rail before the wind of custom. When the Bishop rose there was the sound of shuffling and settling in the pews, followed by some craning of necks in his direction and some subdued whispering.
"Where is Pazon Ewan?"
"What's come of the young pazon?"