Dermot carefully conducted Miss O’Reilly back to the vicarage, and this was the first of many visits which she afterwards paid to the fishwife’s hut.
Dermot was never idle. He had no associates; indeed from his earliest days he had kept aloof from boys of his own age. It was not that he was morose, or proud or ill-tempered, but he appeared to have no sympathy with them, and thus, though possessed of many qualities which would have won him friends, he had not a single friend of his own rank or age in the neighbourhood. Whenever he was not out fishing, he was engaged with his book, either at the vicarage or at home.
He was thus employed one afternoon in his mother’s hut, when Father O’Rourke, the parish priest, made his appearance at the door.
“Come in, your reverence,” said the widow, placing a stool for him near the hearth; “it is a long day since your reverence has been seen down the cove.”
“May be you haven’t seen me often enough,” said Father O’Rourke, a stout broad-faced man, with a countenance of the ordinary low Irish type. “How is it that Dermot there has so many books? Ah! I have heard about his doings; he often goes up, I am told, to the Protestant minister’s. What good can he get by going there?”
“Much good, your reverence,” observed Dermot; “I have been learning to read and write, and gain other knowledge such as I had no other means of obtaining.”
“Such knowledge may be bad for one like you,” said Father O’Rourke; “there is no good can come from the place where you go to get it.”
“Pardon me, Father O’Rourke,” said Dermot, with spirit; “the knowledge I get there is good, and the gentleman who gives it is kind and good too. I will not hear him spoken against.”
“What, lad! do you dare to speak to me in that way?” exclaimed the priest. “You will be going over to the Protestants, and then the curse of Saint Patrick and all the holy saints will rest upon you,—you too, who are born to be a priest of the holy faith. Look; you were marked before you came into the world with the emblem of our faith, and if your mother had followed the wishes of her true friends, you would even now be training for the priesthood, instead of being a poor fisher-boy, as you now must be for ever, and nothing more.” The priest as he spoke seized Dermot’s hand, and bared his arm to the shoulder. There, curiously enough, above the elbow, was a red mark which might easily have been defined as a cross.
The boy drew away his hand indignantly: “I tell you, Father O’Rourke, I am as true a son of the Holy Church as ever I was. Mr Jamieson is no bigot; he gives me instruction, but does not ask me to turn to his faith, and yet, Father O’Rourke, I tell you, to my mind it is a pure and holy faith, whatever you may say to the contrary.”