THE UNTILLED FIELD

by

George Moore

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

IN THE CLAY

It was a beautiful summer morning, and Rodney was out of his bed at six o'clock. He usually went for a walk before going to his studio, and this morning his walk had been a very pleasant one, for yesterday's work had gone well with him. But as he turned into the mews in which his studio was situated he saw the woman whom he employed to light his fire standing in the middle of the roadway. He had never seen her standing in the middle of the roadway before and his doors wide open, and he instantly divined a misfortune, and thought of the Virgin and Child he had just finished. There was nothing else in his studio that he, cared much about. A few busts, done long ago, and a few sketches; no work of importance, nothing that he cared about or that could not be replaced if it were broken.

He hastened his steps and he would have run if he had not been ashamed to betray his fears to the char-woman.

"I'm afraid someone has been into the studio last night. The hasp was off the door when I came this morning. Some of the things are broken."

Rodney heard no more. He stood on the threshold looking round the wrecked studio. Three or four casts had been smashed, the floor was covered with broken plaster, and the lay figure was overthrown, Rodney saw none of these things, he only saw that his Virgin and Child was not on the modelling stool, and not seeing it there, he hoped that the group had been stolen, anything were better than that it should have been destroyed. But this is what had happened: the group, now a mere lump of clay, lay on the floor, and the modelling stand lay beside it.

"I cannot think," said the charwoman, "who has done this. It was a wicked thing to do. Oh, sir, they have broken this beautiful statue that you had in the Exhibition last year," and she picked up the broken fragments of a sleeping girl.

"That doesn't matter," said Rodney. "My group is gone."

"But that, sir, was only in the clay. May I be helping you to pick it up, sir? It is not broken altogether perhaps."

Rodney waved her aside. He was pale and he could not speak, and was trembling. He had not the courage to untie the cloths, for he knew there was nothing underneath but clay, and his manner was so strange that the charwoman was frightened. He stood like one dazed by a dream. He could not believe in reality, it was too mad, too discordant, too much like a nightmare. He had only finished the group yesterday!

He still called it his Virgin and Child, but it had never been a Virgin and Child in the sense suggested by the capital letters, for he had not yet put on the drapery that would convert a naked girl and her baby into the Virgin and Child. He had of course modelled his group in the nude first, and Harding, who had been with him the night before last, had liked it much better than anything he had done, Harding had said that he must not cover it with draperies, that he must keep it for himself, a naked girl playing with a baby, a piece of paganism. The girl's head was not modelled when Harding had seen it. It was the conventional Virgin's head, but Harding had said that he must send for his model and put his model's head upon it. He had taken Harding's advice and had sent for Lucy, and had put her pretty, quaint little head upon it. He had done a portrait of Lucy. If this terrible accident had not happened last night, the caster would have come to cast it to-morrow, and then, following Harding's advice always, he would have taken a "squeeze," and when he got it back to the clay again he was going to put on a conventional head, and add the conventional draperies, and make the group into the conventional Virgin and Child, suitable to Father McCabe's cathedral.

This was the last statue he would do in Ireland. He was leaving Ireland. On this point his mind was made up, and the money he was going to receive for this statue was the money that was going to take him away. He had had enough of a country where there had never been any sculpture or any painting, nor any architecture to signify. They were talking about reviving the Gothic, but Rodney did not believe in their resurrections or in their renaissance or in their anything. "The Gael has had his day. The Gael is passing." Only the night before he and Harding had had a long talk about the Gael, and he had told Harding that he had given up the School of Art, that he was leaving Ireland, and Harding had thought that this was an extreme step, but Rodney had said that he did not want to die, that no one wanted to die less than he did, but he thought he would sooner die than go on teaching. He had made some reputation and had orders that would carry him on for some years, and he was going where he could execute them, to where there were models, to where there was art, to where there was the joy of life, out of a damp religious atmosphere in which nothing flourished but the religious vocation.

"Good Heavens! How happy I was yesterday, full of hope and happiness, my statue finished, and I had arranged to meet Harding in Rome. The blow had fallen in the night. Who had done this? Who had destroyed it?"

He fell into a chair, and sat helpless like his own lay figure. He sat there like one on whom some stupor had fallen, and he was as white as one of the casts; the charwoman had never seen anyone give way like that before, and she withdrew very quietly.

In a little while he got up and mechanically kicked the broken pieces of plaster aside. The charwoman was right, they had broken his sleeping girl: that did not matter much, but the beautiful slenderness, the grace he had caught from Lucy's figure—those slendernesses, those flowing rhythms, all these were gone; the lovely knees were ugly clay. Yes, there was the ruin, the ignoble ruin, and he could not believe in it; he still hoped he would wake and find he had been dreaming, so difficult is it to believe that the living have turned to clay.

In front of him there was the cheval glass, and overcome though he was by misfortune he noticed that he was a small, pale, wiry, and very dark little man, with a large bony forehead. He had seen, strangely enough, such a bumpy forehead, and such narrow eyes in a Florentine bust, and it was some satisfaction to him to see that he was the typical Italian.

"If I had lived three hundred years ago," he said, "I should have been one of Cellini's apprentices."

And yet he was the son of a Dublin builder! His father had never himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; and his father was overcome with joy, and felt that his hopes were about to be realised. For the customer, who professed a certain artistic knowledge, praised the leaves that Rodney had designed, and soon after Rodney gave a still further proof of his desire for art by telling his mother he did not care to go to Mass, that Mass depressed him and made him feel unhappy, and he had begged to be allowed to stay at home and do some modelling. His father excused his son's want of religious feeling on the ground that no one can think of two things at once, and John was now bent on doing sculpture. He had converted a little loft into a studio, and was at work there from dusk to dusk, and his father used to steal up the ladder from time to time to watch his son's progress. He used to say there was no doubt that he had been forewarned, and his wife had to admit that it did seem as if he had had some pre-vision of his son's genius: how else explain the fact that he had said he would like to have a son a sculptor three months before the child was born?

Rodney said he would like to go to the School of Art, and his father kept him there for two years, though he sorely wanted him to help in the business. There was no sacrifice that the elder Rodney would not have made for his son. But Rodney knew that he could not always count upon his father's help, and one day he realised quite clearly that the only way for him to become a sculptor was by winning scholarships. There were two waiting to be won by him, and he felt that he would have no difficulty in winning them. That year there was a scholarship for twenty-five pounds, and there was another scholarship that he might win in the following year, and he thought of nothing else but these scholarships until he had won them; then he started for Paris with fifty pounds in his pocket, and a resolve in his heart that he would live for a year and pay his fees out of this sum of money. Those were hard days, but they were likewise great days. He had been talking to Harding about those days in Paris the night before last, and he had told him of the room at the top of the house for which he paid thirty francs a month. There was a policeman on one side and there was a footman on the other. It was a bare little room, and he lived principally on bread. In those days his only regret was that he had not the necessary threepence to go to the cafe. "One can't go to the cafe without threepence to pay for the harmless bock, and if one has threepence one can sit in the cafe discussing Carpeaux, Rodin, and the mysteries, until two in the morning, when one is at last ejected by an exhausted proprietor at the head of numerous waiters."

Rodney's resolutions were not broken; he had managed to live for nearly a year in Paris upon fifty pounds, and when he came to the end of his money he went to London in search of work. He found himself in London with two pounds, but he had got work from a sculptor, a pupil of Dalous: "a clever man," Rodney said, "a good sculptor; it is a pity he died." At this time Garvier was in fairly good health and had plenty of orders, and besides Rodney he employed three Italian carvers, and from these Italians Rodney learned Italian, and he spent two years in London earning three pounds a week. But the time came when the sculptor had no more work for Rodney, and one day he told him that he would not require him that week, there was no work for him, nor was there the next week or the next, and Rodney kicked his heels and pondered Elgin marbles for a month. Then he got a letter from the sculptor saying he had some work for him to do; and it was a good job of work, and Rodney remained with Garvier for two months, knowing very well that his three pounds a week was precarious fortune. Some time after, the sculptor's health began to fail him and he had to leave London. Rodney received news of his death two years afterwards. He was then teaching sculpture in the art schools of Northampton, and he wondered whether, if Garvier had lived, he would have succeeded in doing better work than he had done.

From Northampton he went to Edinburgh, he wandered even as far as Inverness. From Inverness he had been called back to Dublin, and for seven years he had taught in the School of Art, saving money every year, putting by a small sum of money out of the two hundred pounds that he received from the Government, and all the money he got for commissions. He accepted any commission, he had executed bas-reliefs from photographs. He was determined to purchase his freedom, and a sculptor requires money more than any other artist.

Rodney had always looked upon Dublin as a place to escape from. He had always desired a country where there was sunshine and sculpture. The day his father took him to the School of Art he had left his father talking to the head-master, and had wandered away to look at a Florentine bust, and this first glimpse of Italy had convinced him that he must go to Italy and study Michael Angelo and Donatello. Only twice had he relaxed the severity of his rule of life and spent his holidays in Italy. He had gone there with forty pounds in his pocket, and had studied art where art had grown up naturally, independent of Government grants and mechanical instruction, in a mountain town like Perugia; and his natural home had seemed to him those narrow, white streets streaked with blue shadows. "Oh, how blue the shadows are there in the morning," he had said the other night to Harding, "and the magnificent sculpture and painting! In the afternoon the sun is too hot, but at evening one stands at the walls of the town and sees sunsets folding and unfolding over Italy. I am at home amid those Southern people, and a splendid pagan life is always before one's eyes, ready to one's hand. Beautiful girls and boys are always knocking at one's doors. Beautiful nakedness abounds. Sculpture is native to the orange zone—the embers of the renaissance smoulder under orange-trees."

He had never believed in any Celtic renaissance, and all the talk he had heard about stained glass and the revivals did not deceive him. "Let the Gael disappear," he said. "He is doing it very nicely. Do not interfere with his instinct. His instinct is to disappear in America. Since Cormac's Chapel he has built nothing but mud cabins. Since the Cross of Cong he has imported Virgins from Germany. However, if they want sculpture in this last hour I will do some for them."

And Rodney had designed several altars and had done some religious sculpture, or, as he put it to himself, he had done some sculpture on religious themes. There was no such thing as religious sculpture, and could not be. The moment art, especially sculpture, passes out of the domain of the folk tale it becomes pagan.

One of Rodney's principal patrons was a certain Father McCabe, who had begun life by making an ancient abbey ridiculous by adding a modern steeple. He had ruined two parishes by putting up churches so large that his parishioners could not afford to keep them in repair. All this was many years ago, and the current story was that a great deal of difficulty had been experienced in settling Father McCabe's debts, and that the Bishop had threatened to suspend him if he built any more. However this may be, nothing was heard of Father McCabe for fifteen years. He retired entirely into private life, but at his Bishop's death he was heard of in the newspapers as the propounder of a scheme for the revival of Irish Romanesque. He had been to America, and had collected a large sum of money, and had got permission from his Bishop to set an example of what Ireland could do "in the line" of Cormac's Chapel.

Rodney had designed an altar for him, and he had also given Rodney a commission for a statue of the Virgin. There were no models in Dublin. There was no nakedness worth a sculptor's while. One of the two fat unfortunate women that the artists of Dublin had been living upon for the last seven years was in child, the other had gone to England, and the memory of them filled Rodney with loathing and contempt and an extraordinary eagerness for Italy. He had been on the point of telling Father McCabe that he could not undertake to do the Virgin and Child because there were no models. He had just stopped in time. He had suddenly remembered that the priest did not know that sculptors use models; that he did not know, at all events, that a nude model would be required to model a Virgin from, and he had replied ambiguously, making no promise to do this group before he left Ireland. "If I can get a model here I will do it," he had said to himself. "If not, the ecclesiastic will have to wait until I get to Italy."

Rodney no more believed in finding a good model in Dublin than he believed in Christianity. But the unexpected had happened. He had discovered in Dublin the most delicious model that had ever enchanted a sculptor's eyes, and this extraordinary good fortune had happened in the simplest way. He had gone to a solicitor's office to sign an agreement for one of Father McCabe's altars, and as he came in he saw a girl rise from her typewriting machine. There was a strange idle rhythm in her walk as she crossed the office, and Rodney, as he stood watching her, divined long tapering legs and a sinuous back. He did not know what her face was like. Before she had time to turn round, Mr. Lawrence had called him into his office, and he had been let out by a private door. Rodney had been dreaming of a good model, of the true proportions and delicate articulations that in Paris and Italy are knocking at your door all day, and this was the very model he wanted for his girl feeding chickens and for his Virgin, and he thought of several other things he might do from her. But he might as well wish for a star out of heaven, for if he were to ask that girl to sit to him she would probably scream with horror; she would run to her confessor, and the clergy would be up in arms. Rodney had put the girl out of his head, and had gone on with his design for an altar. But luck had followed him for this long while, and a few days afterwards he had met the pretty clerk in a tea-room. He had not seen her face before, and he did not know who it was until she turned to go, and as she was paying for her tea at the desk he asked her if Mr. Lawrence were in town. He could see that she was pleased at being spoken to. Her eyes were alert, and she told him that she knew he was doing altars for Father McCabe, and Father McCabe was a cousin of hers, and her father had a cheese-monger's shop, and their back windows overlooked the mews in which Rodney had his studio.

"How late you work! Sometimes your light does not go out until twelve o'clock at night."

Henceforth he met her at tea in the afternoons, and they went to the museum together, and she promised to try to get leave from her father and mother to sit to him for a bust. But she could only sit to him for an hour or two before she went to Mr. Lawrence, and Rodney said that she would be doing him an extraordinary favour if she would get up some hours earlier and sit to him from eight till ten. It was amusing to do the bust, but the bust was only a pretext. What he wanted her to do was to sit for the nude, and he could not help trying to persuade her, though he did not believe for a moment that he would succeed. He took her to the museum and he showed her the nude, and told her how great ladies sat for painters in the old times. He prepared the way very carefully, and when the bust was finished he told her suddenly that he must go to a country where he could get models. He could see she was disappointed at losing him, and he asked her if she would sit.

"You don't want a nude model for Our Blessed Lady. Do you?"

There was a look, half of hesitation, half of pleasure, and he knew that she would sit to him, and he guessed she would have sat to him long ago if he had asked her. No doubt his long delay in asking her to sit had made her fear he did not think her figure a good one. He had never had such a model before, not in France or in Italy, and had done the best piece of work he had ever done in his life. Harding had seen it, and had said that it was the best piece that he had done. Harding had said that he would buy it from him if he got rid of the conventional head, and when Harding had left him he had lain awake all night thinking how he should model Lucy's head, and he was up and ready for her at eight, and had done the best head he had ever done in his life.

Good God! that head was now flattened out, and the child was probably thrown back over the shoulders. Nothing remained of his statue. He had not the strength to do or to think. He was like a lay figure, without strength for anything, and if he were to hear that an earthquake was shaking Dublin into ruins he would not care. "Shake the whole town into the sea," he would have said.

The charwoman had closed the door, and he did not hear Lucy until she was in the studio.

"I have come to tell you that I cannot sit again. But what has happened?"

Rodney got up, and she could see that his misfortune was greater than her's.

"Who has done this?" she said. "Your casts are all broken."

"Who, indeed, has done this?"

"Who broke them? What has happened? Tell me. They have broken the bust you did of me. And the statue of the Virgin—has anything happened to that?"

"The statue of the Virgin is a lump of clay. Oh, don't look at it. I am out of my mind."

She took two or three steps forward.

"There it is," he said. "Don't speak about it, don't touch it."

"Something may be left."

"No, nothing is left. Don't look at me that way. I tell you nothing is left. It is a lump of clay, and I cannot do it again. I feel as if I never could do a piece of sculpture again, as if I never wanted to. But what are you thinking of? You said just now that you could not sit to me again. Tell me, Lucy, and tell me quickly. I can see you know something about this. You suspect someone."

"No, I suspect no one. It is very strange."

"You were going to tell me something when you came in. You said you could not sit to me again. Why is that?"

"Because they have found out everything at home, that I sat for you, for the Virgin."

"But they don't know that—"

"Yes, they do. They know everything. Father McCabe came in last night, just after we had closed the shop. It was I who let him in, and mother was sorry. She knew he had come to ask father for a subscription to his church. But I had said that father and mother were at home, and when I brought him upstairs and we got into the light, he stood looking at me. He had not seen me for some years, and I thought at first it was because he saw me grown up. He sat down, and began to talk to father and mother about his church, and the altars he had ordered for it, and the statues, and then he said that you were doing a statue for him, and mother said that she knew you very well, and that you sometimes came to spend an evening with us, and that I sat to you. It was then that I saw him give a start. Unfortunately, I was sitting under a lamp reading a book, and the light was full upon my face, and he had a good view of it. I could see that he recognised me at once. You must have shown him the statue. It was yesterday you changed the head."

"You had not gone an hour when he called, and I had not covered up the group. Now I am beginning to see light. He came here anxious to discuss every sort of thing with me, the Irish Romanesque, the Celtic renaissance, stained glass, the possibility of rebuilding another Cormac's Chapel. He sat warming his shins before the stove, and I thought he would have gone on for ever arguing about the possibility of returning to origins of art. I had to stop him, he was wasting all my day, and I brought over that table to show him my design for the altar. He said it was not large enough, and he took hours to explain how much room the priest would require for his book and his chalice. I thought I should never have got rid of him. He wanted to know about the statue of the Virgin, and he was not satisfied when I told him it was not finished. He prowled about the studio, looking into everything. I had sent him a sketch for the Virgin and Child, and he recognised the pose as the same, and he began to argue. I told him that sculptors always used models, and that even a draped figure had to be done from the nude first, and that the drapery went on afterwards. It was foolish to tell him these things, but one is tempted to tread on their ignorance, their bigotry; all they say and do is based on hatred of life. Iconoclast and peasant! He sent some religion-besotted slave to break my statue."

"I don't think Father McCabe would have done that; he has got me into a great deal of trouble, but you are wronging him. He would not get a ruffian to break into your studio."

Rodney and Lucy stood looking at each other, and she had spoken with such conviction that he felt she might be right.

"But who else could do it except the priest? No one had any interest in having it done except the priest. He as much as told me that he would never get any pleasure from the statue now that he knew it had been done from a naked woman. He went away thinking it out. Ireland is emptying before them. By God, it must have been he. Now it all comes back to me. He has as much as said that something of the temptation of the naked woman would transpire through the draperies. He said that. He said that it would be a very awful thing if the temptations of the flesh were to transpire through the draperies of the Virgin. From the beginning they have looked upon women as unclean things. They have hated woman. Woman have to cover up their heads before they go into the churches. Everything is impure in their eyes, in their impure eyes, whereas I saw nothing in you but loveliness. He was shocked by those round tapering legs; and would have liked to curse them; and the dainty design of the hips, the beautiful little hips, and the breasts curved like shells, that I modelled so well. It is he who blasphemes. They blaspheme against Life.... My God, what a vile thing is the religious mind. And all the love and veneration that went into that statue! There it is: only a lump of clay."

"I am sure you are wronging Father Tom; he has his faults, but he would not do such a thing as that."

"Yes," said Rodney, "he would. I know them better than you. I know the creed. But you did not finish your story. Tell me what happened when he began to suspect that you sat for the statue."

"He asked me if I had seen the statue of the Virgin in your studio. I grew red all over. I could not answer him, and mother said, 'Why don't you answer Father Tom?' I could see from his manner that he knew that I had sat for the statue. And then he said he wanted to speak to father and mother. Mother said I had read enough, that I had better go to bed."

"And you went out of the room knowing what the priest was going to say?" said Rodney, melting into sympathy for the first time. "And then?"

"I waited on the stairs for a little while, long enough to make sure that he was telling them that I had sat for the statue. I heard the door open, father came out, they talked on the landing. I fled into my room and locked the door, and just as I locked the door I heard father say, 'My daughter! you're insulting my daughter!' You know father is suffering from stone, and mother said, 'If you don't stop I shall be up with you all night,' and so she was. All the night I heard father moaning, and to-day he is so ill the doctor is with him, and he has been taken to the hospital, and mother says when he leaves the hospital he will turn me out of the house."

"Well," said Rodney, "great misfortunes have happened us both. It was a cruel thing of the priest to tell your father that you sat for me. But to pay someone to wreck my studio!"

Lucy begged of him not to believe too easily that Father McCabe had done this. He must wait a little while, and he had better communicate with the police. They would be able to find out who had done it.

"Now," she said, "I must go."

He glanced at the rags that had once covered his statue, but he had not the courage to undo them. If his statue had been cast the ruin would not be so irreparable. It could be put together in some sort of way.

Who would have done it but the priest? It was difficult to believe that a priest could do such a thing, that anyone could do such a thing, it was an inhuman thing to do. He might go to the police as Lucy had suggested, and the police would inquire the matter out. But would that be of any satisfaction; a wretched fine, a few days' imprisonment. Of one thing he was sure, that nowhere except in Ireland could such a thing happen. Thank God he was going! There was at least satisfaction in knowing that only twelve hours of Ireland remained. To-morrow evening he would be in Paris. He would leave the studio as it was. Maybe he might take a few busts and sketches, a few books, and a few pictures; he must take some of them with him, and he tried to formulate some plan. But he could not collect his thoughts sufficiently to think out the details. Would there be time to have a case made, or should he leave them to be sold, or should he give orders that they should be sent after him?

At that moment his eyes went towards the lump of clay, and he wished that he had asked the charwoman to take it out of his studio. He thought of it as one thinks of a corpse, and he took down a few books and tied them up with a string, and then forgot what he was doing. He and his country were two thousand years apart, and would always be two thousand years apart, and then growing superstitious, he wondered if his country had punished him for his contempt. There was something extraordinarily fateful in the accident that had happened to him. Such an accident had never happened to anyone before. A most singular accident! He stood looking through the studio unable to go on with his packing, thinking of what Harding and he had been saying to each other. The "Celtic renaissance!" Harding believed, or was inclined to believe, that the Gael was not destined to disappear, that in making the Cross of Cong he had not got as far as he was intended to get. But even Harding had admitted that no race had taken to religion quite so seriously as the Celt. The Druids had put aside the oak leaves and put on the biretta. There had never been a religious revolution in Ireland. In the fifth and sixth centuries all the intelligence of Ireland had gone into religion. "Ireland is immersed in the religious vocation, and there can be no renaissance without a religious revolt." The door of the studio opened. It was Lucy; and he wondered what she had come back for.

"It wasn't Father Tom. I knew it wasn't," she said.

"Do you know who it was then?"

"Yes, my brothers, Pat and Taigdh."

"Pat and Taigdh broke my statue! But what did they do that for? What did I ever do to them?"

"I saw them whispering together. I could see they had a secret, something inspired me, and when Taigdh went out I got Pat by himself and I coaxed him and I frightened him. I told him that things had been broken in your studio, and that the police were making inquiries. I saw at once that he knew all about it. He got frightened and he told me that last night when I went to my room he and Taigdh came out of their room and had listened on the stairs. They did not understand everything that was said, they only understood that I had sat for a statue, and that the priest did not wish to put it up in his church, and that perhaps he would have to pay for it, and if he did not the Bishop would suspend him—you know there has always been talk about Father Tom's debts. They got talking, and Taigdh said he would like to see the statue, and he persuaded Pat to follow him, and they climbed along the wall and dropped into the mews, and got the hasp off the door with the kitchen poker."

"But why did they break the statue?" said Rodney.

"I don't think they know why themselves. I tried to get Pat to tell me, but all he could tell me was that he had bumped against a woman with a cloak on."

"My lay figure."

"And in trying to get out of the studio they had knocked down a bust, and after they had done that Taigdh said: 'We had better have down this one. The priest does not like it, and if we have it down he won't have to pay for it.'"

"They must have heard the priest saying that he did not want the statue."

"Very likely they did, but I am sure the priest never said that he wanted the statue broken."

"Oh, it is a great muddle," said Rodney. "But there it is. My statue is broken. Two little boys have broken it. Two little boys who overheard a priest talking nonsense, and did not quite understand. I am going away to-night."

"Then I shall not see you again,... and you said I was a good model."

Her meaning was clear to him. He remembered how he had stood in the midst of his sculpture asking himself what a man is to do when a girl, walking with a walk at once idle and rhythmical, stops suddenly and puts her hand on his shoulder and looks up in his face. He had sworn he would not kiss her again and he had broken his oath, but the desire of her as a model had overborne every other desire. Now he was going away for ever, and his heart told him that she was as sweet a thing as he would find all the world over. But if he took her with him he would have to look after her till the end of his life. This was not his vocation. His hesitation endured but a moment, if he hesitated at all.

"You'd like to go away with me, but what should I do with you. I'm thirty-five and you're sixteen." He could see that the difference of age did not strike her—she was not looking into the remote future.

"I don't think, Lucy, your destiny is to watch me making statues. Your destiny is a gayer one than that. You want to play the piano, don't you?"

"I should have to go to Germany to study, and I have no money. Well," she said, "I must go back now. I just came to tell you who had wrecked your studio. Good-bye. It has all been an unlucky business for both of us."

"A beautiful model," Rodney said to himself, as he watched her going up the mews. "But there are other girls just as good in Paris and in Rome." And he remembered one who had sat to him in Paris, and this gave him courage. "So it was two little boys," he said, "who wrecked my studio. Two stupid little boys; two little boys who have been taught their Catechism, and will one day aspire to the priesthood." And that it should be two stupid little boys who had broken his statue seemed significant. "Oh, the ignorance, the crass, the patent ignorance! I am going. This is no place for a sculptor to live in. It is no country for an educated man. It won't be fit for a man to live in for another hundred years. It is an unwashed country, that is what it is!"

CHAPTER II

SOME PARISHIONERS

I

The way before him was plain enough, yet his uncle's apathy and constitutional infirmity of purpose seemed at times to thwart him. Some two or three days ago, he had come running down from Kilmore with the news that a baby had been born out of wedlock, and Father Stafford had shown no desire that his curate should denounce the girl from the altar.

"The greatest saints," he said, "have been kind, and have found excuses for the sins of others."

And a few days later, when Father Maguire told his uncle that the Salvationists had come to Kilmore, and that he had walked up the village street and slit their drum with a carving knife, his uncle had not approved of his conduct, and what had especially annoyed Father Tom was that his uncle seemed to deplore the slitting of the drum in the same way as he deplored that the Kavanaghs had a barrel of porter in every Saturday, namely, as one of those regrettable excesses to which human nature is liable. On being pressed he had agreed with his nephew that dancing and drinking were no preparation for the Sabbath, but he would not agree that evil could be suppressed by force. He had even hinted that too strict a rule brought about a revolt against the rule, and when Father Tom had expressed his disbelief at any revolt against the authority of the priest, Father Stafford said:—

"They may just leave you, they may just go to America."

"Then you think that it is our condemnation of sin that is driving the people to America."

"My dear Tom, you told me the other day that you met a lad and a lass walking along the roadside, and that you drove them home. You told me you were sure they were talking about things they should not talk about; you have no right to assume these things. You're asking of the people an abstinence you don't practice yourself. Sometimes your friends are women."

"Yes. But—"

Father Tom's anger prevented him from finding an adequate argument. Father Stafford pushed the tobacco bowl towards his nephew.

"You're not smoking, Tom."

"Your point is that a certain amount of vice is inherent in human nature, and that if we raise the standard of virtuous living our people will escape from us to New York or London."

"The sexes mix freely everywhere in western Europe; only in Ireland and Turkey is there any attempt made to separate them."

Later in the evening Father Tom insisted that the measure of responsibility was always the same.

"I should be sorry," said his uncle, "to say that those who inherit drunkenness bear the same burden of responsibility as those who come of parents who are quite sane—"

"You cannot deny, uncle John, that free will and predestination—"

"My dear Tom, I really must go to bed. It is after midnight."

As he walked home, Father Maguire thought of the great change he perceived in his uncle. Father Stafford liked to go to bed at eleven, the very name of St. Thomas seemed to bore him; fifteen years ago he would sit up till morning. Father Maguire remembered the theological debates, sometimes prolonged till after three o'clock, and the passionate scholiast of Maynooth seemed to him unrecognisable in the esurient Vicar-General, only occasionally interested in theology, at certain hours and when he felt particularly well. He could not reconcile the two ages, his mind not being sufficiently acute to see that after all no one can discuss theology for more than five-and-twenty years without wearying of the subject.

The moon was shining among the hills and the mystery of the landscape seemed to aggravate his sensibility, and he asked himself if the guardians of the people should not fling themselves into the forefront of the battle. Men came to preach heresy in his parish—was he not justified in slitting their drum?

He had recourse to prayer, and he prayed for strength and for guidance. He had accepted the Church, and in the Church he saw only apathy, neglect, and bad administration on the part of his superiors.... He had read that great virtues are, like large sums of money, deposited in the bank, whereas humility is like the pence, always at hand, always current. Obedience to our superiors is the sure path. He could not persuade himself that it was right for him to allow the Kavanaghs to continue a dissolute life of drinking and dancing. They were the talk of the parish; and he would have spoken against them from the altar, but his uncle had advised him not to do so. Perhaps his uncle was right; he might be right regarding the Kavanaghs. In the main he disagreed with his uncle, but in this particular instance it might be well to wait and pray that matters might improve.

Father Tom believed Ned Kavanagh to be a good boy. Ned was going to marry Mary Byrne, and Father Tom had made up this marriage. The Byrnes did not care for the marriage—they were prejudiced against Ned on account of his family. But he was not going to allow them to break off the marriage. He was sure of Ned, but in order to make quite sure he would get him to take the pledge. Next morning when the priest had done his breakfast, and was about to unfold his newspaper, his servant opened the door, and told him that Ned Kavanagh was outside and wanted to see him.

It was a pleasure to look at this nice, clean boy, with his winning smile, and the priest thought that Mary could not wish for a better husband. Ned's smile seemed a little fainter than usual, and his face was paler; the priest wondered, and presently Ned told the priest that he had come to confession, and going down on his knees, he told the priest that he had been drunk last Saturday night, and that he had come to take the pledge. He would never do any good while he was at home, and one of the reasons he gave for wishing to marry Mary Byrne was his desire to leave home. The priest asked him if matters were mending, and if his sister showed any signs of wishing to be married.

"Sorra sign," said Ned.

"That's bad news you're bringing me," said the priest, and he walked up and down the room, and they talked over Kate's wilful character.

"From the beginning she did not like living at home," said the priest.

"I don't care about living at home," said Ned.

"But for a different reason," remarked the priest. "You want to leave home to get married, and have a wife and children, if God is pleased to give you children."

Kate had been in numerous services, and the priest sat thinking of the stories he had heard. He had heard that Kate had come back from her last situation in a cab, wrapped up in blankets, saying she was ill. On inquiry it was found that she had only been three or four days in her situation; three weeks had to be accounted for. He had questioned her himself regarding this interval, but had not been able to get any clear and definite answer from her.

"She and mother never stop quarrelling about Pat Connex."

"It appears," said the priest, "that your mother went out with a jug of porter under her apron, and offered a sup of it to Pat Connex, who was talking with Peter M'Shane, and now he is up at your cabin every Saturday."

"That's it," said Ned.

"Mrs. Connex was here the other day, and I can tell you that if Pat marries your sister he will find himself cut off with a shilling."

"She's been agin us all the while," said Ned. "Her money has made her proud, but I don't blame her. If I had the fine house she has, maybe I would be as proud as she."

"Maybe you would," said the priest. "But what I am thinking of is your sister Kate. She will never get Pat Connex. Pat will never go against his mother."

"Well, you see he comes up and plays the melodion on Saturday night," said Ned, "and she can't stop him from doing that."

"Then you think," said the priest, "that Pat will marry your sister?"

"I don't think she wants to marry him."

"If she doesn't want to marry him, what's all this talk about?"

"She likes to meet Pat in the evenings and go for a walk with him, and she likes him to put his arm round her waist and kiss her, saving your reverence's pardon."

"It is strange that you should be so unlike. You come here and ask me to speak to Mary Byrne's parents for you, and that I'll do, Ned, and it will be all right. You will make a good husband, and though you were drunk last night, you have taken the pledge to-day, and I will make a good marriage for Kate, too, if she'll listen to me."

"And who may your reverence be thinking of?"

"I'm thinking of Peter M'Shane. He gets as much as six shillings a week and his keep on Murphy's farm, and his mother has got a bit of money, and they have a nice, clean cabin. Now listen to me. There is a poultry lecture at the school-house to-night. Do you think you could bring your sister with you?"

"We used to keep a great many hens at home, and Kate had the feeding of them, and now she's turned agin them, and she wants to live in town, and she even tells Pat Connex she would not marry a farmer, however much he was worth."

"But if you tell her that Pat Connex will be at the lecture will she come?"

"Yes, your reverence, if she believes me."

"Then do as I bid you," said the priest; "you can tell her that Pat Connex will be there."

II

After leaving the priest Ned crossed over the road to avoid the public-house. He went for a walk on the hills, and it was about five when he turned towards the village. On his way there he met his father, and Ned told him that he had been to see the priest, and that he was going to take Mary to the lecture.

Michael Kavanagh wished his son God-speed. He was very tired; and he thought it was pretty hard to come home after a long day's work to find his wife and daughter quarrelling.

"I am sorry your dinner is not ready, father, but it won't be long now. I'll cut the bacon."

"I met Ned on the road," said her father. "He has gone to fetch Mary. He is going to take her to the lecture on poultry-keeping at the school-house."

"Ah, he has been to the priest, has he?" said Kate, and her mother asked her why she said that, and the wrangle began again.

Ned was the peacemaker; there was generally quiet in the cabin when he was there. He came in with Mary, a small, fair girl, and a good girl, who would keep his cabin tidy. His mother and sisters were broad-shouldered women with blue-black hair and red cheeks, and it was said that he had said he would like to bring a little fair hair into the family.

"We've just come in for a minute," said Mary. "Ned said that perhaps you'd be coming with us."

"All the boys in the village will be there to-night," said Ned. "You had better come with us." And pretending he wanted to get a coal of fire to light his pipe, Ned whispered to Kate as he passed her, "Pat Connex will be there."

She looked at the striped sunshade she has brought back from the dressmaker's—she had once been apprenticed to a dressmaker—but Ned said that a storm was blowing and she had better leave the sunshade behind.

The rain beat in their faces and the wind came sweeping down the mountain and made them stagger. Sometimes the road went straight on, sometimes it turned suddenly and went up-hill. After walking for a mile they came to the school-house. A number of men were waiting outside, and one of the boys told them that the priest had said they were to keep a look out for the lecturer, and Ned said that he had better stay with them, that his lantern would be useful to show her the way. They went into a long, smoky room. The women had collected into one corner, and the priest was walking up and down, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Now he stopped in his walk to scold two children who were trying to light a peat fire in a tumbled down grate.

"Don't be tired, go on blowing," he said. "You are the laziest child I have seen this long while."

Ned came in and blew out his lantern, but the lady he had mistaken for the lecturer was a lady who had come to live in the neighbourhood lately, and the priest said:—

"You must be very much interested in poultry, ma'am, to come out on such a night as this."

The lady stood shaking her waterproof.

"Now, then, Lizzie, run to your mother and get the lady a chair."

And when the child came back with the chair, and the lady was seated by the fire, he said:—

"I'm thinking there will be no lecturer here to-night, and that it would be kind of you if you were to give the lecture yourself. You have read some books about poultry, I am sure?"

"Well, a little—but—"

"Oh, that doesn't matter," said the priest. "I'm sure the book you have read is full of instruction."

He walked up the room towards a group of men and told them they must cease talking, and coming back to the young woman, he said:—

"We shall be much obliged if you will say a few words about poultry. Just say what you have in your mind about the different breeds."

The young woman again protested, but the priest said:—

"You will do it very nicely." And he spoke like one who is not accustomed to being disobeyed. "We will give the lecturer five minutes more."

"Is there no farmer's wife who could speak," the young lady said in a fluttering voice. "She would know much more than I. I see Biddy M'Hale there. She has done very well with her poultry."

"I daresay she has," said the priest, "but the people would pay no attention to her. She is one of themselves. It would be no amusement to them to hear her."

The young lady asked if she might have five minutes to scribble a few notes. The priest said he would wait a few minutes, but it did not matter much what she said.

"But couldn't some one dance or sing," said the young lady.

"Dancing and singing!" said the priest. "No!"

And the young lady hurriedly scribbled a few notes about fowls for laying, fowls for fattening, regular feeding, warm houses, and something about a percentage of mineral matter. She had not half finished when the priest said:—

"Now will you stand over there near the harmonium. Whom shall I announce?"

The young woman told him her name, and he led her to the harmonium and left her talking, addressing most of her instruction to Biddy M'Hale, a long, thin, pale-faced woman, with wistful eyes.

"This won't do," said the priest, interrupting the lecturer,—"I'm not speaking to you, miss, but to my people. I don't see one of you taking notes, not even you, Biddy M'Hale, though you have made a fortune out of your hins. Didn't I tell you from the pulpit that you were to bring pencil and paper and write down all you heard. If you had known years ago all this young lady is going to tell you you would be rolling in your carriages to-day."

Then the priest asked the lecturer to go on, and the lady explained that to get hens to lay about Christmas time, when eggs fetched the best price, you must bring on your pullets early.

"You must," she said, "set your eggs in January."

"You hear that," said the priest. "Is there anyone who has got anything to say about that? Why is it that you don't set your eggs in January?"

No one answered, and the lecturer went on to tell of the advantages that would come to the poultry-keeper whose eggs were hatched in December.

As she said this, the priest's eyes fell upon Biddy M'Hale, and, seeing that she was smiling, he asked her if there was any reason why eggs could not be hatched in the beginning of January.

"Now, Biddy, you must know all about this, and I insist on your telling us. We are here to learn."

Biddy did not answer.

"Then what were you smiling at?"

"I wasn't smiling, your reverence."

"Yes; I saw you smiling. Is it because you think there isn't a brooding hin in January?"

It had not occurred to the lecturer that hens might not be brooding so early in the year, and she waited anxiously. At last Biddy said:—

"Well, your reverence, it isn't because there are no hins brooding. You'll get brooding hins at every time in the year; but, you see, you can't rear chickens earlier than March. The end of February is the earliest I have ever seen. But, of course, if you could rear them in January, all that the young lady said would be quite right. I have nothing to say agin it. I have no fault to find with anything she says, your reverence."

"Only that it can't be done." said the priest. "Well, you ought to know, Biddy."

The villagers were laughing.

"That will do," said the priest. "I don't mind your having a bit of amusement, but you're here to learn."

And as he looked round the room, quieting the villagers into silence, his eyes fell on Kate. "That's all right," he thought, and he looked for the others, and spied Pat Connex and Peter M'Shane near the door. "They're here, too," he thought. "When the lecture is over I will see them and bring them all together. Kate Kavanagh won't go home until she promises to marry Peter. I have had enough of her goings on in my parish."

But Kate had caught sight of Peter. She would get no walk home with Pat that night, and she suspected her brother of having done this for a purpose. She got up to go.

"I don't want anyone to leave this room," said the priest. "Kate Kavanagh, why are you going? Sit down till the lecture is over."

And as Kate had not strength to defy the priest she sat down, and the lecturer continued for a little while longer. The priest could see that the lecturer had said nearly all she had to say, and he had begun to wonder how the evening's amusement was to be prolonged. It would not do to let the people go home until Michael Dunne had closed his public-house, and the priest looked round the audience thinking which one he might call upon to say a few words on the subject of poultry-keeping.

From one of the back rows a voice was heard:—

"What about the pump, your reverence?"

"Well, indeed, you may ask," said the priest.

And immediately he began to speak of the wrong they had suffered by not having a pump in the village. The fact that Almighty God had endowed Kilmore with a hundred mountain streams did not release the authorities from the obligation of supplying the village with a pump. Had not the authorities put up one in the neighbouring village?

"You should come out," he said, "and fight for your rights. You should take off your coats like men, and if you do I'll see that you get your rights," and he looked round for someone to speak.

There was a landlord among the audience, and as he was a Catholic the priest called upon him to speak. He said that he agreed with the priest in the main. They should have their pump, if they wanted a pump; if they didn't, he would suggest that they asked for something else. Farmer Byrne said he did not want a pump, and then everyone spoke his mind, and things got mixed. The Catholic landlord regretted that Father Maguire was against allowing a poultry-yard to the patients in the lunatic asylum. If, instead of supplying a pump, the Government would sell them eggs for hatching at a low price, something might be gained. If the Government would not do this, the Government might be induced to supply books on poultry free of charge. It took the Catholic landlord half an hour to express his ideas regarding the asylum, the pump, and the duties of the Government, and in this way the priest succeeded in delaying the departure of the audience till after closing time. "However fast they walk," he said to himself, "they won't get to Michael Dunne's public-house in ten minutes, and he will be shut by then." It devolved upon him to bring the evening's amusement to a close with a few remarks, and he said:—

"Now, the last words I have to say to you I'll address to the women. Now listen to me. If you pay more attention to your poultry you'll never be short of half a sovereign to lend your husbands, your sons, or your brothers."

These last words produced an approving shuffling of feet in one corner of the room, and seeing that nothing more was going to happen, the villagers got up and they went out very slowly, the women curtseying and the men lifting their caps to the priest as they passed him.

He had signed to Ned and Mary that he wished to speak to them, and after he had spoken to Ned he called Kate and reminded her that he had not seen her at confession lately.

"Pat Connex and Peter M'Shane, now don't you be going. I will have a word with you presently." And while Kate tried to find an excuse to account for her absence from confession, the priest called to Ned and Mary, who were talking at a little distance. He told them he would be waiting for them in church tomorrow, and he said he had never made a marriage that gave him more pleasure. He alluded to the fact that they had come to him. He was responsible for this match, and he accepted the responsibility gladly. His uncle, the Vicar-General, had delegated all the work of the parish to him.

"Father Stafford," he said abruptly, "will be very glad to hear of your marriage, Kate Kavanagh."

"My marriage," said Kate .... "I don't think I shall ever be married."

"Now, why do you say that?" said the priest. Kate did not know why she had said that she would never be married. However, she had to give some reason, and she said:—

"I don't think, your reverence, anyone would have me."

"You are not speaking your mind," said the priest, a little sternly. "It is said that you don't want to be married, that you like courting better."

"I'd like to be married well enough," said Kate.

"Those who wish to make safe, reliable marriages consult their parents and they consult the priest. I have made your brother's marriage for him. Why don't you come to me and ask me to make up a marriage for you?"

"I think a girl should make her own marriage, your reverence."

"And what way do you go about making up a marriage? Walking about the roads in the evening, and going into public-houses, and leaving your situations. It seems to me, Kate Kavanagh, you have been a long time making up this marriage."

"Now, Pat Connex, I've got a word with you. You're a good boy, and I know you don't mean any harm by it; but I have been hearing tales about you. You've been up to Dublin with Kate Kavanagh. Your mother came up to speak to me about this matter yesterday, and she said: 'Not a penny of my money will he ever get if he marries her,' meaning the girl before you. Your mother said; 'I've got nothing to say against her, but I've got a right to choose my own daughter-in-law.' These are your mother's very words, Pat, so you had better listen to reason. Do you hear me, Kate?"

"I hear your reverence."

"And if you hear me, what have you got to say to that?"

"He's free to go after the girl he chooses, your reverence," said Kate.

"There's been courting enough," the priest said. "If you aren't going to be married you must give up keeping company. I see Paddy Boyle outside the door. Go home with him. Do you hear what I'm saying, Pat? Go straight home, and no stopping about the roads. Just do as I bid you; go straight home to your mother."

Pat did not move at the bidding of the priest. He stood watching Kate as if he were waiting for a sign from her, but Kate did not look at him.

"Do you hear what I'm saying to you?" said the priest.

"Yes, I hear," said Pat.

"And aren't you going?" said the priest.

Everyone was afraid Pat would raise his hand against the priest, and they looked such strong men, both of them, that everyone wondered which would get the better of the other.

"You won't go home when I tell you to do so. We will see if I can't put you out of the door then."

"If you weren't a priest," said Pat, "the devil a bit of you would put me out of the door."

"If I weren't a priest I would break every bone in your body for talking to me like that. Now out you go," he said, taking him by the collar, and he put him out.

"And now, Kate Kavanagh," said the priest, coming back from the door, "you said you didn't marry because no man would have you. Peter has been waiting for you ever since you were a girl of sixteen years old, and I may say it for him, since he doesn't say much himself, that you have nearly broken his heart."

"I'm sure I never meant it. I like Peter."

"You acted out of recklessness without knowing what you were doing."

A continual smile floated round Peter's moustache, and he looked like a man to whom rebuffs made no difference. His eyes were patient and docile; and whether it was the presence of this great and true love by her side, or whether it was the presence of the priest, Kate did not know, but a great change came over her, and she said:—

"I know that Peter has been very good, that he has cared for me this long while .... If he wishes to make me his wife—"

When Kate gave him her hand there was a mist in his eyes, and he stood trembling before her.

III

Next morning, as Father Maguire was leaving the house, his servant handed him a letter. It was from an architect who had been down to examine the walls of the church. The envelope that Father Maguire was tearing open contained his report, and Father Maguire read that it would require two hundred pounds to make the walls secure. Father Maguire was going round to the church to marry Mary Byrne and Ned Kavanagh, and he continued to read the report until he arrived at the church. The wedding party was waiting, but the architect's report was much more important than a wedding, and he wandered round the old walls examining the cracks as he went. He could see they were crumbling, and he believed the architect was right, and that it would be better to build a new church. But to build a new church three or four thousand pounds would be required, and the architect might as well suggest that he should collect three or four millions.

And Ned and Mary noticed the dark look between the priest's eyes as he came out of the sacristy, and Ned regretted that his reverence should be out of his humour that morning, for he had spent three out of the five pounds he had saved to pay the priest for marrying him. He had cherished hopes that the priest would understand that he had had to buy some new clothes, but the priest looked so cross that it was with difficulty he summoned courage to tell him that he had only two pounds left.

"I want two hundred pounds to make the walls of the church safe. Where is the money to come from? All the money in Kilmore goes into drink," he added bitterly, "into blue trousers. No, I won't marry you for two pounds. I won't marry you for less than five. I will marry you for nothing or I will marry you for five pounds," he added, and Ned looked round the wedding guests; he knew that none had five shillings in his pocket, and he did not dare to take the priest at his word and let him marry him for nothing.

Father Maguire felt that his temper had got the better of him, but it was too late to go back on what he said. Marry them for two pounds with the architect's letter in the pocket of his cassock! And if he were to accept two pounds, who would pay five to be married? If he did not stand out for his dues the marriage fee would be reduced from five pounds to one pound ... And if he accepted Ned's two pounds his authority would be weakened; he would not be able to get them to subscribe to have the church made safe. On the whole he thought he had done right, and his servant was of the same opinion.

"They'd have the cassock off your back, your reverence, if they could get it."

"And the architect writing to me that the walls can't be made safe under two hundred pounds, and the whole lot of them not earning less than thirty shillings a week, and they can't pay the priest five pounds for marrying them."

In the course of the day he went to Dublin to see the architect; and next morning it occurred to him that he might have to go to America to get the money to build a new church, and as he sat thinking the door was opened and the servant said that Biddy M'Hale wanted to see his reverence.

She came in curtseying, and before saying a word she took ten sovereigns out of her pocket and put them upon the table. The priest thought she had heard of the architect's report, and he said:—

"Now, Biddy, I am glad to see you. I suppose you have brought me this for my church. You have heard of the money it will cost to make the walls safe."

"No, your reverence, I did not hear any more than that there were cracks in the walls."

"But you have brought me this money to have the cracks mended?"

"Well, no, your reverence. I have been thinking a long time of doing something for the church, and I thought I should like to have a window put up in the church with coloured glass in it."

Father Maguire was touched by Biddy's desire to do something for the church, and he thought he would have no difficulty in persuading her. He could get this money for the repairs, and he told her that her name would be put on the top of the subscription list.

"A subscription from Miss M'Hale—L10. A subscription from Miss M'Hale."

Biddy did not answer, and the priest could see that it would give her no pleasure whatever to subscribe to mending the walls of his church, and it annoyed him to see her sitting in his own chair stretching out her hands to take the money back. He could see that her wish to benefit the church was merely a pretext for the glorification of herself, and the priest began to argue with the old woman. But he might have spared himself the trouble of explaining that it was necessary to have a new church before you could have a window. She understood well enough it was useless to put a window up in a church that was going to fall down. But her idea still was St. Joseph in a red cloak and the Virgin in blue with a crown of gold on her head, and forgetful of everything else, she asked him whether her window in the new church should be put over the high altar, or if it should be a window lighting a side altar.

"But, my good woman, ten pounds will not pay for a window. You couldn't get anything to speak of in the way of a window for less than fifty pounds."

He had expected to astonish Biddy, but she did not seem astonished. She said that although fifty pounds was a great deal of money she would not mind spending all that money if she were to have her window all to herself. She had thought at first of only putting in part of the window, a round piece at the top of the window, and she had thought that that could be bought for ten pounds. The priest could see that she had been thinking a good deal of this window, and she seemed to know more about it than he expected. "It is extraordinary," he said to himself, "how a desire of immortality persecutes these second-class souls. A desire of temporal immortality," he said, fearing he had been guilty of a heresy.

"If I could have the whole window to myself, I would give you fifty pounds, your reverence."

The priest had no idea she had saved as much money as that.

"The hins have been very good to me, your reverence, and I would like to put up the window in the new church better than in the old church."

"But I've got no money, my good woman, to build the church."

"Ah, won't your reverence go to America and get the money. Aren't our own kith and kin over there, and aren't they always willing to give us money for our churches."

The priest spoke to her about statues, and suggested that perhaps a statue would be a more permanent gift, but the old woman knew that stained glass was more permanent, and that it could be secured from breakage by means of wire netting.

"Do you know, Biddy, it will require three or four thousand pounds to build a new church. If I go to America and do my best to get the money, how much will you help me with?"

"Does your reverence mean for the window?"

"No, Biddy, I was thinking of the church itself."

And Biddy said that she would give him five pounds to help to build the church and fifty pounds for her window, and, she added, "If the best gilding and paint costs a little more I would be sorry to see the church short."

"Well, you say, Biddy, you will give five pounds towards the church. Now, let us think how much money I could get in this parish."

He had a taste for gossip, and he liked to hear everyone's domestic details. She began by telling him she had met Kate Kavanagh on the road, and Kate had told her that there had been great dancing last night.

"But there was no wedding," said the priest.

"I only know, your reverence, what Kate Kavanagh told me. There had been great dancing last night. The supper was ordered at Michael Dunne's, and the cars were ordered, and they went to Enniskerry and back."

"But Michael Dunne would not dare to serve supper to people who were not married," said the priest.

"The supper had been ordered, and they would have to pay for it whether they ate it or not. There was a pig's head, and the cake cost eighteen shillings, and it was iced."

"Never mind the food," said the priest, "tell me what happened."

"Kate said that after coming back from Enniskerry, Michael Dunne said: 'Is this the wedding party?' and that Ned jumped off the car, and said: 'To be sure. Amn't I the wedded man.' And they had half a barrel of porter."

"Never mind the drink," said the priest, "what then?"

"There was dancing first and fighting after. Pat Connex and Peter M'Shane were both there. You know Pat plays the melodion, and he asked Peter to sing, and Peter can't sing a bit, and he was laughed at. So he grabbed a bit of stick and hit Pat on the head, and hit him badly, too. I hear the doctor had to be sent for."

"That is always the end of their dancing and drinking," said the priest. "And what happened then, what happened? After that they went home?"

"Yes, your reverence, they went home."

"Mary Byrne went home with her own people, I suppose, and Ned went back to his home."

"I don't know, your reverence, what they did."

"Well, what else did Kate Kavanagh tell you?"

"She had just left her brother and Mary, and they were going towards the Peak. That is what Kate told me when I met her on the road."

"Mary Byrne would not go to live with a man to whom she was not married. But you told me that Kate said she had just left Mary Byrne and her brother."

"Yes, they were just coming out of the cabin," said Biddy. "She passed them on the road."

"Out of whose cabin?" said the priest.

"Out of Ned's cabin. I know it must have been out of Ned's cabin, because she said she met them at the cross roads."

He questioned the old woman, but she grew less and less explicit.

"I don't like to think this of Mary Byrne, but after so much dancing and drinking, it is impossible to say what might not have happened."

"I suppose they forgot your reverence didn't marry them."

"Forgot!" said the priest. "A sin has been committed, and through my fault."

"They will come to your reverence to-morrow when they are feeling a little better."

The priest did not answer, and Biddy said:—

"Am I to take away my money, or will your reverence keep it for the stained glass window."

"The church is tumbling down, and before it is built up you want me to put up statues."

"I'd like a window as well or better."

"I've got other things to think of now."

"Your reverence is very busy. If I had known it I would not have come disturbing you. But I'll take my money with me."

"Yes, take your money," he said. "Go home quietly, and say nothing about what you have told me. I must think over what is best to be done."

Biddy hurried away gathering her shawl about her, and this great strong man who had taken Pat Connex by the collar and could have thrown him out of the school-room, fell on his knees and prayed that God might forgive him the avarice and anger that had caused him to refuse to marry Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne.

"Oh! my God, oh! my God," he said, "Thou knowest that it was not for myself that I wanted the money, it was to build up Thine Own House."

He remembered that his uncle had warned him again and again aginst the sin of anger. He had thought lightly of his uncle's counsels, and he had not practised the virtue of humility, which, as St. Teresa said, was the surest virtue to seek in this treacherous world.

"Oh, my God, give me strength to conquer anger."

The servant opened the door, but seeing the priest upon his knees, she closed it quietly, and the priest prayed that if sin had been committed he might bear the punishment.

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.

"Nothing can justify my action in refusing to marry them," said Father Tom, "nothing. Uncle John, I know that you can extenuate, that you are kind, but I do not see it is possible to look at it from any other side."

"My dear Tom, you are not sure they remained together; the only knowledge you have of the circumstances you obtained from that old woman, Biddy M'Hale, who cannot tell a story properly. An old gossip, who manufactures stories out of the slightest materials ... but who sells excellent eggs; her eggs are always fresh. I had two this morning."

"Uncle John, I did not come here to be laughed at."

"I am not laughing at you, my dear Tom; but really you know very little about this matter."

"I know well enough that they remained together last night. I examined the old woman carefully, and she had just met Kate Kavanagh on the road. There can be no doubt about it," he said.

"But," said Father John, "they intended to be married; the intention was there."

"Yes, but the intention is no use. We are not living in a country where the edicts of the Council of Trent have not been promulgated."

"That's true," said Father John. "But how can I help you? What am I to do?"

"Are you feeling well enough for a walk this morning? Could you come up to Kilmore?"

"But it is two miles—I really—"

"The walk will do you good. If you do this for me, Uncle John—"

"My dear Tom, I am, as you say, not feeling very well this morning, but—"

He looked at his nephew, and seeing that he was suffering, he said:—

"I know what these scruples of conscience are; they are worse than physical suffering."

But before he decided to go with his nephew to seek the sinners out, he could not help reading him a little lecture.

"I don't feel as sure as you do that a sin has been committed, but admitting that a sin has been committed, I think you ought to admit that you set your face against the pleasure of these poor people too resolutely."

"Pleasure," said Father Tom. "Drinking and dancing, hugging and kissing each other about the lanes."

"You said dancing—now, I can see no harm in it."

"There is no harm in dancing, but it leads to harm. If they only went back with their parents after the dance, but they linger in the lanes."

"It was raining the other night, and I felt sorry, and I said, 'Well, the boys and girls will have to stop at home to-night, there will be no courting to-night.' If you do not let them walk about the lanes and make their own marriages, they marry for money. These walks at eventide represent all the aspiration that may come into their lives. After they get married, the work of the world grinds all the poetry out of them."

"Walking under the moon," said Father Tom, "with their arms round each other's waists, sitting for hours saying stupid things to each other—that isn't my idea of poetry. The Irish find poetry in other things except sex."

"Mankind," said Father John, "is the same all the world over. The Irish are not different from other races; do not think it. Woman represents all the poetry that the ordinary man is capable of appreciating."

"And what about ourselves?"

"We are different. We have put this interest aside. I have never regretted it, and you have not regretted it either."

"Celibacy has never been a trouble to me."

"But, Tom, your own temperament should not prevent you from sympathy with others. You are not the whole of human nature; you should try to get a little outside yourself."

"Can one ever do this?" said Father Tom.

"Well, you see what a difficulty your narrow-mindedness has brought you into."

"I know all that," said Father Tom. "It is no use insisting upon it. Now will you come with me? They must be married this morning. Will you come with me? I want you to talk to them. You are kinder than I am. You sympathise with them more than I do, and it wasn't you who refused to marry them."

Father John got out of his arm-chair and staggered about the room on his short fat legs, trying to find his hat. Father Tom said:—

"Here it is. You don't want your umbrella. There's no sign of rain."

"No," said his uncle, "but it will be very hot presently. My dear Tom, I can't walk fast."

"I am sorry, I didn't know I was walking fast."

"You are walking at the rate of four miles an hour at the least."

"I am sorry, I will walk slower."

At the cross rods inquiry was made, and the priests were told that the cabin Ned Kavanagh had taken was the last one.

"That's just another half-mile," remarked Father John.

"If we don't hasten we shall be late."

"We might rest here," said Father John, "for a moment," and he leaned against a gate. "My dear Tom, it seems to me you're agitating yourself a little unnecessarily about Ned Kavanagh and his wife—I mean the girl he is going to marry."

"I am quite sure. Ned Kavanagh brought Mary back to his cabin. There can be no doubt."

"Even so," said Father John. "He may have thought he was married."

"How could he have thought he was married unless he was drunk, and that cannot be put forward as an excuse. No, my dear uncle, you are inclined for subtleties this morning."

"He may have thought he was married. Moreover, he intended to be married, and if through forgetfulness—"

"Forgetfulness!" cried Father Maguire. "A pretty large measure of forgetfulness!"

"I shouldn't say that a mortal sin has been committed; a venial one .... If he intended to be married—"

"Oh, my dear uncle, we shall be late, we shall be late!"

Father Stafford repressed the smile that gathered in the corner of his lips, and he remembered how Father Tom had kept him out of bed till two o'clock in the morning, talking to him about St. Thomas Aquinas.

"If they're to be married to-day we must be getting on." And Father Maguire's stride grew more impatient. "I'll walk on in front."

At last he spied a woman in a field, and she told him that the married couple had gone towards the Peak. Most of them had gone for a walk, but Pat Connex was in bed, and the doctor had to be sent for.

"I've heard," said Father Tom, "of last night's drunkenness. Half a barrel of porter; there's what remains," he said, pointing to some stains on the roadway. "They were too drunk to turn off the tap."

"I heard your reverence wouldn't marry them," the woman said.

"I am going to bring them down to the church at once."

"Well, if you do," said the woman, "you won't be a penny the poorer; you will have your money at the end of the week. And how do you do, your reverence." The woman dropped a curtsey to Father Stafford. "It's seldom we see you up here."

"They have gone towards the Peak," said Father Tom, for he saw his uncle would take advantage of the occasion to gossip. "We shall catch them up there."

"I am afraid I am not equal to it, Tom. I'd like to do this for you, but I am afraid I am not equal to another half-mile up-hill."

Father Maguire strove to hypnotize his parish priest.

"Uncle John, you are called upon to make this effort. I cannot speak to these people as I should like to."

"If you spoke to them as you would like to, you would only make matters worse," said Father John.

"Very likely, I'm not in a humour to contest these things with you. But I beseech you to come with me. Come," he said, "take my arm."

They went a few hundred yards up the road, then there was another stoppage, and Father Maguire had again to exercise his power of will, and he was so successful that the last half-mile of the road was accomplished almost without a stop.

At Michael Dunne's, the priests learned that the wedding party had been there, and Father Stafford called for a lemonade.

"Don't fail me now, Uncle John. They are within a few hundred yards of us. I couldn't meet them without you. Think of it. If they were to tell me that I had refused to marry them for two pounds, my authority would be gone for ever. I should have to leave the parish."

"My dear Tom, I would do it if I could, but I am completely exhausted."

At that moment sounds of voices were heard.

"Listen to them, Uncle John." And the curate took the glass from Father John. "They are not as far as I thought, they are sitting under these trees. Come," he said.

They walked some twenty yards, till they reached a spot where the light came pouring through the young leaves, and all the brown leaves of last year were spotted with light. There were light shadows amid the rocks and pleasant mosses, and the sounds of leaves and water, and from the top of a rock Kate listened while Peter told her they would rebuild his house.

"The priests are after us," she said.

And she gave a low whistle, and the men and boys looked round, and seeing the priests coming, they dispersed, taking several paths, and none but Ned and Mary were left behind. Ned was dozing, Mary was sitting beside him fanning herself with her hat; they had not heard Kate's whistle, and they did not see the priests until they were by them.

"Now, Tom, don't lose your head, be quiet with them."

"Will you speak to them, or shall I?" said Father Tom.

In the excitement of the moment he forgot his own imperfections and desired to admonish them.

"I think you had better let me speak to them," said Father John. "You are Ned Kavanagh," he said, "and you are Mary Byrne, I believe. Now, I don't know you all, for I am getting an old man, and I don't often come up this way. But notwithstanding my age, and the heat of the day, I have come up, for I have heard that you have not acted as good Catholics should. I don't doubt for a moment that you intended to get married, but you have, I fear, been guilty of a great sin, and you've set a bad example."

"We were on our way to your reverence now," said Mary. "I mean to his reverence."

"Well," said Father Tom, "you are certainly taking your time over it, lying here half asleep under the trees."

"We hadn't the money," said Mary, "it wasn't our fault."

"Didn't I say I'd marry you for nothing?"

"But sure, your reverence, that's only a way of speaking."

"There's no use lingering here," said Father Tom. "Ned, you took the pledge the day before yesterday, and yesterday you were tipsy."

"I may have had a drop of drink in me, your reverence. Pat Connex passed me the mug of porter and I forgot myself."

"And once," said the priest, "you tasted the porter you thought you could go on taking it."

Ned did not answer, and the priests whispered together.

"We are half way now," said Father Tom, "we can get there before twelve o'clock."

"I don't think I'm equal to it," said Father John. "I really don't think—"

The sounds of wheels were heard, and a peasant driving a donkey cart came up the road.

"You see it is all up-hill," said Father John. "See how the road ascends. I never could manage it."

"The road is pretty flat at the top of the hill once you get to the top of the hill, and the cart will take you to the top."

It seemed undignified to get into the donkey cart, but his nephew's conscience was at stake, and the Vicar-General got in, and Father Tom said to the unmarried couple:—

"Now walk on in front of us, and step out as quickly as you can."

And on the way to the church Father Tom remembered that he had caught sight of Kate standing at the top of the rock talking to Peter M'Shane. In a few days they would come to him to be married, and he hoped that Peter and Kate's marriage would make amends for this miserable patchwork, for Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne's marriage was no better than patchwork.

IV

Mrs. Connex promised the priest to keep Pat at home out of Kate's way, and the neighbours knew it was the priest's wish that they should do all they could to help him to bring about this marriage, and everywhere Kate went she heard nothing talked of but her marriage.

The dress that Kate was to be married in was a nice grey silk. It had been bought at a rummage sale, and she was told that it suited her. But Kate had begun to feel that she was being driven into a trap. In the week before her marriage she tried to escape. She went to Dublin to look for a situation; but she did not find one. She had not seen Pat since the poultry lecture, and his neglect angered her. She did not care what became of her.

On the morning of her wedding she turned round and asked her sister if she thought she ought to marry Peter, and Julia said it would be a pity if she didn't. Six cars had been engaged, and, feeling she was done for, she went to the church, hoping it would fall down on her. Well, the priest had his way, and Kate felt she hated him and Mrs. M'Shane, who stood on the edge of the road. The fat were distributed alongside of the lean, and the bridal party drove away, and there was a great waving of hands, and Mrs. M'Shane waited until the last car was out of sight.

Her husband had been dead many years, and she lived with her son in a two-roomed cabin. She was one of those simple, kindly natures that everyone likes and that everyone despises, and she returned home like a lonely goose, waddling slowly, a little overcome by the thought of the happiness that awaited her son. There would be no more lonely evenings in the cabin; Kate would be with him now, and later on there would be some children, and she waddled home thinking of the cradle and the joy it would be to her to take her grandchildren upon her knee. When she returned to the cottage she sat down, so that she might dream over her happiness a little longer. But she had not been sitting long when she remembered there was a great deal of work to be done. The cabin would have to be cleaned from end to end, there was the supper to be cooked, and she did not pause in her work until everything was ready. At five the pig's head was on the table, and the sheep's tongues; the bread was baked; the barrel of porter had come, and she was expecting the piper every minute. As she stood with her arms akimbo looking at the table, thinking of the great evening it would be, she thought how her old friend, Annie Connex, had refused to come to Peter's wedding. Wasn't all the village saying that Kate would not have married Peter if she had not been driven to it by the priest and by her mother.

"Poor boy," she thought, "his heart is so set upon her that he has no ears for any word against her."

She could not understand why people should talk ill of a girl on her wedding day. "Why shouldn't a girl be given a chance?" she asked herself. "Why should Annie Connex prevent her son from coming to the dance? If she were to go to her now and ask her if she would come? and if she would not come herself, if she would let Pat come round for an hour? If Annie would do this all the gossips would have their tongues tied. Anyhow she could try to persuade her." And she locked her door and walked up the road and knocked at Mrs. Connex's.

Prosperity in the shapes of pig styes and stables had collected round Annie's door, and Mrs. M'Shane was proud to be a visitor in such a house.

"I came round, Annie, to tell you they're married."

"Well, come in, Mary," she said, "if you have the time."

The first part of the sentence was prompted by the news that Kate was safely married and out of Pat's way; and the second half of the sentence, "if you have the time," was prompted by a wish that Mary should see that she need not come again for some time at least.

To Annie Connex the Kavanagh family was abomination. The father got eighteen shillings a week for doing a bit of gardening. Ned had been a quarryman, now he was out of work and did odd jobs. The Kavanaghs took in a baby, and they got five or six shillings a week for that. Mrs. Kavanagh sold geraniums at more than their value, and she got more than the market value for her chickens—she sold them to charitable folk who were anxious to encourage poultry farming; and now Julia, the second daughter, had gone in for lace making, and she made a lace that looked as if it were cut out of paper, and sold it for three times its market value.

And to sell above market value was abominable to Annie Connex. Her idea of life was order and administration, and the village she lived in was thriftless and idle. The Kavanaghs received out-door relief; they got two shillings a week off the rates, though every Saturday evening they bought a quarter barrel of porter, and Annie Connex could not believe in the future of a country that would tolerate such a thing. If her son had married a Kavanagh her life would have come to an end, and the twenty years she had worked for him would have been wasted years. Thank God, Kate was out of her son's way, and on seeing Mary she resolved that Pat should never cross the M'Shane's threshold.

Mrs. M'Shane looked round the comfortable kitchen, with sides of bacon, and home-cured hams hanging from the rafters. She had not got on in life as well as Mrs. Connex, and she knew she would never have a beautiful closed range, but an open hearth till the end of her days. She could never have a nice dresser with a pretty carved top. The dresser in her kitchen was deal, and had no nice shining brass knobs on it. She would never have a parlour, and this parlour had in it a mahogany table and a grandfather's clock that would show you the moon on it just the same as it was in the sky, and there was a glass over the fireplace. This was Annie Connex's own parlour. The parlour on the other side of the house was even better furnished, for in the summer months Mrs. Connex bedded and boarded her lodgers for one pound or one pound five shillings a week.

"So she was married to-day, and Father Maguire married her after all. I never thought he would have brought her to it. Well, I'm glad she's married." It rose to Mary's lips to say, "you are glad she didn't marry your son," but she put back the words. "It comes upon me as a bit of surprise, for sure and all I could never see her settling down in the parish."

"Them that are the wildest before marriage are often the best after, and I think it will be like that with Kate."

"I hope so," said Annie. "And there is reason why it should be like that. She must have liked Peter better than we thought; you will never get me to believe that it was the priest's will or anybody's will that brought Kate to do what she did."

"I hope she'll make my boy a good wife."

"I hope so, too," said Annie, and the women sat over the fire thinking it out.

Annie Connex wore an apron, and a black straw hat; and her eyes were young, and kind, and laughing, but Mrs. M'Shane, who had known her for twenty years, often wondered what Annie would have been like if she had not got a kind husband, and if good luck had not attended her all through life.

"We never had anyone like her before in the parish. I hear she turned round to her sister Julia, who was dressing her, and said, 'Now am I to marry him, or shall I go to America?' And she was putting on her grey dress at the time."

"She looked well in that grey dress; there was lace on the front of it, and everyone said that a handsomer girl hasn't been married in the parish for years. There isn't a man in the parish that would not be in Peter's place to-day if he only dared."

"I don't catch your meaning, Mary."

"Well, perhaps I oughtn't to have said it now that she's my own daughter, but I think many would have been a bit afraid of her after what she said to the priest three days ago."

"She did have her tongue on him. People are telling all ends of stories."

"Tis said that Father Maguire was up at the Kavanagh's three days ago, and I heard that she hunted him. She called him a policeman, and a tax collector, and a landlord, and if she said this she said more to a priest than anyone ever said before. 'There are plenty of people in the parish,' she said, 'who believe he could turn them into rabbits if he liked.' As for the rabbits she isn't far from the truth, though I don't take it on myself to say if it be a truth or a lie. But I know for a fact that Patsy Rogan was going to vote for the Unionist to please his landlord, but the priest had been to see his wife, who was going to be confined, and didn't he tell her that if Patsy voted for the wrong man there would be horns on the new baby, and Mrs. Rogan was so frightened that she wouldn't let her husband go when he came in that night till he had promised to vote as the priest wished."

"Patsy Rogan is an ignorant man," said Annie, "there are many like him even here."

"Ah, sure there will be always some like him. Don't we like to believe the priest can do all things."

"But Kate doesn't believe the priest can do these things. Anyhow she's married, and there will be an end to all the work that has been going on."

"That's true for you, Annie, and that's just what I came to talk to you about. I think now she's married we ought to give her a chance. Every girl ought to get her chance, and the way to put an end to all this talk about her will be for you to come round to the dance to-night."

"I don't know that I can do that. I am not friends with the Kavanaghs, though I always bid them the time of day when I meet them on the road."

"If you come in for a few minutes, or if Pat were to come in for a few minutes. If Peter and Pat aren't friends they'll be enemies."

"Maybe they'd be worse enemies if I don't keep Pat out of Kate's way. She's married Peter; but her mind is not settled yet."

"Yes, Annie, I've thought of all that; but they'll be meeting on the road, and, if they aren't friends, there will be quarrelling, and some bad deed may be done."

Annie did not answer, and, thinking to convince her, Mary said:—

"You wouldn't like to see a corpse right over your window."

"It ill becomes you, Mary, to speak of corpses after the blow that Peter gave Pat with his stick at Ned Kavanagh's wedding. No; I must stand by my son, and I must keep him out of the low Irish, and he won't be safe until I get him a good wife."

"The low Irish! indeed, Annie, it ill becomes you to talk that way of your neighbours. Is it because none of us have brass knockers on our doors? I have seen this pride growing up in you, Annie Connex, this long while. There isn't one in the village now that you've any respect for except the grocer, that black Protestant, who sits behind his counter and makes money, and knows no enjoyment in life at all."

"That's your way of looking at it; but it isn't mine. I set my face against my son marrying Kate Kavanagh, and you should have done the same."

"Something will happen to you for the cruel words you have spoken to me this day."

"Mary, you came to ask me to your son's wedding, and I had to tell you—"

"Yes, and you've told me that you won't come, and that you hate the Kavanaghs, and you've said all you could against them. I should not have listened to all you said; if I did, it is because we have known each other these twenty years. Don't I remember well the rags you had on your back when you came to this village. It ill becomes—"

Mrs. M'Shane got up and went out and Annie followed her to the gate.

The sounds of wheels and hoofs were heard, and the wedding party passed by, and on the first car whom should they see but Kate sitting between Pat and Peter.

"Good-bye, Annie. I see that Pat's coming to our dance after all. I must hurry down the road to open the door to him."

And she laughed as she waddled down the road, and she could not speak for want of breath when she got to the door. They were all there, Pat and the piper and Kate and Peter and all their friends; and she could not speak? and hadn't the strength to find the key. She could only think of the black look that had come over Annie's face when she saw Pat sitting by Kate on the car. She had told Annie that she would be punished, and Mrs. M'Shane laughed as she searched for the key, thinking how quickly her punishment had come.

She searched for the key, and all the while they were telling her how they had met Pat at Michael Dunne's.

"When he saw us he tried to sneak into the yard; but I went after him. And don't you think I did right?" Kate said, as they went into the house. And when they were all inside, she said: "Now I'll get the biggest jug of porter, and one shall drink one half and the other the other."

Peter was fond of jugs, and had large and small; some were white and brown, and some were gilt, with pink flowers. At last she chose the great brown one.

"Now, Peter, you'll say something nice."

"I'll say, then," said Peter, "this is the happiest day of my life, as it should be, indeed; for haven't I got the girl that I wanted, and hasn't Pat forgiven me for the blow I struck him? For he knows well I wouldn't hurt a hair of his head. Weren't we boys together? But I had a cross drop in me at the time, and that was how it was."

Catching sight of Kate's black hair and rosy cheeks, which were all the world to him, he stopped speaking and stood looking at her, unheedful of everything; and he looked so good and foolish at that time that more than one woman thought it would be a weary thing to live with him.

"Now, Pat, you must make a speech, too," said Kate.

"I haven't any speech in me," he said. "I'm glad enough to be here; but I'm sore afraid my mother saw me sitting on the car, and I think I had better be going home and letting you finish this marriage."

"What's that you're saying?" said Kate. "You won't go out of this house till you've danced a reel with me, and now sit down at the table next to me; and, Peter, you sit on the other side of him, so that he won't run away to his mother."

Her eyes were as bright as coals of fire, and she called to her father, who was at the end of the table, to have another slice of pig's head, and to the piper, who was having his supper in the window, to have a bit more; and then she turned to Pat, who said never a word, and laughed at him for having nothing to say.

It seemed to them as if there was no one in the room but Kate; and afterwards they remembered things. Ned remembered that Kate had seemed to put Pat out of her mind. She had stood talking to her husband, and she had said that he must dance with her, though it was no amusement to a girl to dance opposite Peter. And Mary, Ned's wife, remembered how Kate, though she had danced with Peter in the first reel, had not been able to keep her eyes from the corner where Pat sat sulking, and that, sudden-like, she had grown weary of Peter. Mary remembered she had seen a wild look pass in Kate's eyes, and that she had gone over to Pat and pulled him out.

It was a pleasure for a girl to dance opposite to Pat, so cleverly did his feet move to the tune. And everyone was admiring them when Pat cried out:—

"I'm going home. I bid you all good-night; here finish this wedding as you like."

And before anyone could stop him he had run out of the house.

"Peter, go after him," Kate said; "bring him back. It would be ill luck on our wedding night for anyone to leave us like that."

Peter went out of the door, and was away some time; but he came back without Pat.

"The night is that dark, I lost him," he said. Then Kate did not seem to care what she said. Her black hair fell down, and she told Peter he was a fool, and that he should have run faster. Her mother said it was the porter that had been too much for her; but she said it was the priest's blessing, and this frightened everyone. But, after saying all this, she went to her husband, saying that he was very good to her, and she had no fault to find with him. But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than her mind seemed to wander, and everyone had expected her to run out of the house. But she went into the other room instead, and shut the door behind her. Everyone knew then there would be no more dancing that night; and the piper packed up his pipes. And Peter sat by the fire, and he seemed to be crying. They were all sorry to leave him like this; and, so that he might not remember what had happened, Ned drew a big jug of porter, and put it by him.

He drank a sup out of it, but seemed to forget everything, and the jug fell out of his hand.

"Never mind the pieces, Peter," his mother said.

"You can't put them together; and it would be better for you not to drink any more porter. Go to bed. There's been too much drinking this night."

"Mother, I want to know why she said I didn't run fast enough after Pat. And didn't she know that if I hit Pat so hard it was because there were knobs on his stick; and didn't I pick up his stick by mistake of my own."

"Sure, Peter, it wasn't your fault; we all know that and Kate knows it too. Now let there be no more talking or drinking. No, Peter, you've had enough porter for to-night."

He looked round the kitchen, and seeing that Kate was not there, he said:—

"She's in the other room, I think; mother, you'll be wantin' to go to bed."

And Peter got on his feet and stumbled against the wall, and his mother had to help him towards the door.

"Is it drunk I am, mother? Will you open the door for me?"

But Mrs. M'Shane could not open the door, and she said:—

"I think she's put a bit of stick in it."

"A bit of stick in the door? And didn't she say that she didn't want to marry me? Didn't she say something about the priest's blessing?"

And then Peter was sore afraid that he would not get sight of his wife that night, and he said:—

"Won't she acquie-esh-sh?"

And Kate said:—

"No, I won't."

And then he said:—

"We were married in church-to-day, you acquie-eshed."

And she said:—

"I'll not open the door to you. You're drunk, Peter, and not fit to enter a decent woman's room."

"It isn't because I've a drop too much in me that you should have fastened the door on me; it is because you're thinking of the blow I've gave Pat. But, Kate, it was because I loved you so much that I struck him. Now will you open—the door?"

"No, I'll not open the door to-night," she said. "I'm tired and want to go to sleep."

And when he said he would break open the door, she said:—

"You're too drunk, Peter, and sorra bit of good it will do you. I'll be no wife to you to-night, and that's as true as God's in heaven."

"Peter," said his mother, "don't trouble her to-night. There has been too much dancing and drinking."

"It's a hard thing ... shut out of his wife's room."

"Peter, don't vex her to-night. Don't hammer her door any more."

"Didn't she acquie-esh? Mother, you have always been agin me. Didn't she acquie-esh?"

"Oh, Peter, why do you say I'm agin you?"

"Did you hear her say that I was drunk. If you tell me I'm drunk I'll say no more. I'll acquie-esh."

"Peter, you must go to sleep."

"Yes, go to sleep. ... I want to go to sleep, but she won't open the door."

"Peter, never mind her."

"It isn't that I mind; I'm getting sleepy, but what I want to know, mother, before I go to bed, is if I'm drunk. Tell me I'm not drunk on my wedding night, and, though Kate—and I'll acquie-esh in all that may be put upon me."

He covered his face with his hands and his mother begged him not to cry. He became helpless, she put a blanket under his head and covered him with another blanket, and went up the ladder and lay down in the hay. She asked herself what had she done to deserve this trouble? and she cried a great deal; and the poor, hapless old woman was asleep in the morning when Peter stumbled to his feet. And, after dipping his head in a pail of water, he remembered that the horses were waiting for him in the farm. He walked off to his work, staggering a little, and as soon as he was gone Kate drew back the bolt of the door and came into the kitchen.

"I'm going, mother," she called up to the loft.

"Wait a minute, Kate," said Mrs. M'Shane, and she was half way down the ladder when Kate said:—

"I can't wait, I'm going."

She walked up the road to her mother's, and she hardly saw the fields or the mountains, though she knew she would never look upon them again. And her mother was sweeping out the house. She had the chairs out in the pathway. She had heard that the rector was coming down that afternoon, and she wanted to show him how beautifully clean she kept the cabin.

"I've come, mother, to give you this," and she took the wedding ring off her finger and threw it on the ground. "I don't want it; I shut the door on him last night, and I'm going to America to-day. You see how well the marriage that you and the priest made up together has turned out."

"Going to America," said Mrs. Kavanagh, and it suddenly occurred to her that Kate might be going to America with Pat Connex, but she did not dare to say it.

She stood looking at the bushes that grew between their cottage and the next one, and she remembered how she and her brother used to cut the branches of the alder to make pop guns, for the alder branches are full of sap, and when the sap is expelled there is a hole smooth as the barrel of a gun. "I'm going," she said suddenly, "there's nothing more to say. Good-bye."

She walked away quickly, and her mother said, "She's going with Pat Connex." But she had no thought of going to America with him. It was not until she met him a little further on, at the cross roads, that the thought occurred to her that he might like to go to America with her. She called him, and he came to her, and he looked a nice boy, but she thought he was better in Ireland. And the country seemed far away, though she was still in it, and the people too, though she was still among them.

"I'm going to America, Pat."

"You were married yesterday."

"Yes, that was the priest's doing and mother's and I thought they knew best. But I'm thinking one must go one's way, and there's no judging for one's self here. That's why I'm going. You'll find some other girl, Pat."

"There's not another girl like you in the village. We're a dead and alive lot. You stood up to the priest."

"I didn't stand up to him enough. You're waiting for someone. Who are you waiting for?"

"I don't like to tell you, Kate."

She pressed him to answer her, and he told her he was waiting for the priest. His mother had said he must marry, and the priest was coming to make up a marriage for him.

"Everything's mother's."

"That's true, Pat, and you'll give a message for me. Tell my mother-in-law that I've gone."

"She'll be asking me questions and I'll be sore set for an answer."

She looked at him steadily, but she left him without speaking, and he stood thinking.

He had had good times with her, and all such times were ended for him for ever. He was going to be married and he did not know to whom. Suddenly he remembered he had a message to deliver, and he went down to the M'Shanes' cabin.

"Ah, Mrs. M'Shane," he said, "it was a bad day for me when she married Peter. But this is a worse one, for we've both lost her."

"My poor boy will feel it sorely."

When Peter came in for his dinner his mother said: "Peter, she's gone, she's gone to America, and you're well rid of her."

"Don't say that, mother, I am not well rid of her, for there's no other woman in the world for me except her that's gone. Has she gone with Pat Connex?"

"No, he said nothing about that, and it was he who brought the message."

"I've no one, mother, to blame but myself. I was drunk last night, and how could she let a drunken fellow like me into her room."

He went out to the backyard, and his mother heard him crying till it was time for him to go back to work.

V

As he got up to go to work he caught sight of Biddy M'Hale coming up the road; he rushed past her lest she should ask him what he was crying about, and she stood looking after him for a moment, and went into the cabin to inquire what had happened.

"Sure she wouldn't let her husband sleep with her last night," said Mrs. M'Shane, "and you'll be telling the priest that. It will be well he should know it at once."

Biddy would have liked to have heard how the wedding party had met Pat Connex on the road, and what had happened after, but the priest was expecting her, and she did not dare to keep him waiting much longer. But she was not sorry she had been delayed, for the priest only wanted to get her money to mend the walls of the old church, and she thought that her best plan would be to keep him talking about Kate and Peter. He was going to America to-morrow or the day after, and if she could keep her money till then it would be safe.

His front door was open, he was leaning over the green paling that divided his strip of garden from the road, and he looked very cross indeed.

She began at once:—

"Sure, your reverence, there's terrible work going on in the village, and I had to stop to listen to Mrs M'Shane. Kate Kavanagh, that was, has gone to America, and she shut her door on him last night, saying he was drunk."

"What's this you're telling me?"

"If your reverence will listen to me—"

"I'm always listening to you, Biddy M'Hale. Go on with your story."

It was a long time before he fully understood what had happened, but at last all the facts seemed clear, and he said:—

"I'm expecting Pat Connex."

Then his thoughts turned to the poor husband weeping in the backyard, and he said:—

"I made up this marriage so that she might not go away with Pat Connex."

"Well, we've been saved that," said Biddy.

"Ned Kavanagh's marriage was bad enough, but this is worse. It is no marriage at all."

"Ah, your reverence, you musn't be taking it to heart. If the marriage did not turn out right it was the drink."

"Ah, the drink—the drink," said the priest, and he declared that the brewer and the distiller were the ruin of Ireland.

"That's true for you; at the same time we musn't forget that they have put up many a fine church."

"It would be impossible, I suppose, to prohibit the brewing of ale and the distillation of spirit." The priest's brother was a publican and had promised a large subscription. "And now, Biddy, what are you going to give me to make the walls secure. I don't want you all to be killed while I am away."

"There's no fear of that, your reverence; a church never fell down on anyone."

"Even so, if it falls down when nobody's in it where are the people to hear Mass?"

"Ah, won't they be going down to hear Mass at Father Stafford's?"

"If you don't wish to give anything say so."

"Your reverence, amn't I—?"

"We don't want to hear about that window."

Biddy began to fear she would have to give him a few pounds to quiet him. But, fortunately, Pat Connex came up the road, and she thought she might escape after all.

"I hear, Pat Connex, you were dancing with Kate Kavanagh, I should say Kate M'Shane, and she went away to America this morning. Have you heard that?"

"I have, your reverence. She passed me on the road this morning."

"And you weren't thinking you might stop her?"

"Stop her," said Pat. "Who could stop Kate from doing anything she wanted to do?"

"And now your mother writes to me, Pat Connex, to ask if I will get Lennon's daughter for you."

"I see your reverence has private business with Pat Connex. I'll be going," said Biddy, and she was many yards down the road before he could say a word.

"Now, Biddy M'Hale, don't you be going." But Biddy pretended not to hear him.

"Will I be running after her," said Pat, "and bringing her back?"

"No, let her go. If she doesn't want to help to make the walls safe I'm not going to go on my knees to her. ... You'll all have to walk to Father Stafford's to hear Mass. Have you heard your mother say what she's going to give towards the new church, Pat Connex?"

"I think she said, your reverence, she was going to send you ten pounds."

"That's very good of her," and this proof that a public and religious spirit was not yet dead in his parish softened the priest's temper, and, thinking to please him and perhaps escape a scolding, Pat began to calculate how much Biddy had saved.

"She must be worth, I'm thinking, close on one hundred pounds to-day." As the priest did not answer, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if she was worth another fifty."

"Hardly as much as that," said the priest.

"Hadn't her aunt the house we're living in before mother came to Kilmore, and they used to have the house full of lodgers all the summer. It's true that her aunt didn't pay her any wages, but when she died she left her a hundred pounds, and she has been making money ever since."

This allusion to Biddy's poultry reminded the priest that he had once asked Biddy what had put the idea of a poultry farm into her head, and she had told him that when she was taking up the lodgers' meals at her aunt's she used to have to stop and lean against the banisters, so heavy were the trays.

"One day I slipped and hurt myself, and I was lying on my back for more than two years, and all the time I could see the fowls pecking in the yard, for my bed was by the window. I thought I would like to keep fowls when I was older."

The priest remembered the old woman standing before him telling him of her accident, and while listening he had watched her, undecided whether she could be called a hunchback. Her shoulders were higher than shoulders usually are, she was jerked forward from the waist, and she had the long, thin arms, and the long, thin face, and the pathetic eyes of the hunchback. Perhaps she guessed his thoughts. She said:—

"In those days we used to go blackberrying with the boys. We used to run all over the hills."

He did not think she had said anything else, but she had said the words in such a way that they suggested a great deal—they suggested that she had once been very happy, and that she had suffered very soon the loss of all her woman's hopes. A few weeks, a few months, between her convalescence and her disappointment had been all her woman's life. The thought that life is but a little thing passed across the priest's mind, and then he looked at Pat Connex and wondered what was to be done with him. His conduct at the wedding would have to be inquired into, and the marriage that was being arranged would have to be broken off if Kate's flight could be attributed to him.

"Now, Pat Connex, we will go to Mrs. M'Shane. I shall want to hear her story."

"Sure what story can she tell of me? Didn't I run out of the house away from Kate when I saw what she was thinking of? What more could I do?"

"If Mrs. M'Shane tells the same story as you do we'll go to your mother's, and afterwards I'll go to see Lennon about his daughter."

Pat's dancing with Kate and Kate's flight to America had reached Lennon's ears, and it did not seem at all likely that he would consent to give his daughter to Pat Connex, unless, indeed, Pat Connex agreed to take a much smaller dowry than his mother had asked for.

These new negotiations, his packing, a letter to the Bishop, and the payment of bills fully occupied the last two days, and the priest did not see Biddy again till he was on his way to the station. She was walking up and down her poultry-yard, telling her beads, followed by her poultry; and it was with difficulty that he resisted the impulse to ask her for a subscription, but the driver said if they stopped they would miss the train.

"Very well," said the priest, and he drove past her cabin without speaking to her.

In the bar-rooms of New York, while trying to induce a recalcitrant loafer to part with a dollar, he remembered that he had not met anyone so stubborn as Biddy. She had given very little, and yet she seemed to be curiously mixed up with the building of the church. She was the last person he saw on his way out, and, a few months later, he was struck by the fact that she was the first parishioner he saw on his return. As he was driving home from the station in the early morning whom should he see but Biddy, telling her beads, followed by her poultry. The scene was the same except that morning was substituted for evening. This was the first impression. On looking closer he noticed that she was not followed by as many Plymouth Rocks as on the last occasion.

"She seems to be going in for Buff Orpingtons," he said to himself.

"It's a fine thing to see you again, and your reverence is looking well. I hope you've been lucky in America?"

"I have brought home some money anyhow, and the church will be built, and you will tell your beads under your window one of these days."

"Your reverence is very good to me, and God is very good."

And she stood looking after him, thinking how she had brought him round to her way of thinking. She had always known that the Americans would pay for the building, but no one else but herself would be thinking of putting up a beautiful window that would do honour to God and Kilmore. And it wasn't her fault if she didn't know a good window from a bad one, as well as the best of them. And it wasn't she who was going to hand over her money to the priest or his architect to put up what window they liked. She had been inside every church within twenty miles of Kilmore, and would see that she got full value for her money.

At the end of the week she called at the priest's house to tell him the pictures she would like to see in the window, and the colours. But the priest's servant was not certain whether Biddy could see his reverence.

"He has a gentleman with him."

"Isn't it the architect he has with him? Don't you know that it is I who am putting up the window?"

"To be sure," said the priest; "show her in." And he drew forward a chair for Miss M'Hale, and introduced her to the architect. The little man laid his pencil aside, and this encouraged Biddy, and she began to tell him of the kind of window she had been thinking of. But she had not told him half the things she wished to have put into the window when he interrupted her, and said there would be plenty of time to consider what kind of window should be put in when the walls were finished and the roof was upon them.

"Perhaps it is a little premature to discuss the window, but you shall choose the subjects you would like to see represented in the window, and as for the colours, the architect and designer will advise you. But I am sorry to say, Biddy, that this gentleman says that the four thousand pounds the Americans were good enough to give me will not do much more than build the walls."

"They're waiting for me to offer them my money, but I won't say a word," Biddy said to herself; and she sat fidgetting with her shawl, coughing from time to time, until the priest lost his patience.

"Well, Biddy, we're very busy here, and I'm sure you want to get back to your fowls. When the church is finished we'll see if we want your window." The priest had hoped to frighten her, but she was not the least frightened. Her faith in her money was abundant; she knew that as long as she had her money the priest would come to her for it on one pretext or another, sooner or later. And she was as well pleased that nothing should be settled at present, for she was not quite decided whether she would like to see Christ sitting in judgment, or Christ crowning His Virgin Mother; and during the next six months she pondered on the pictures and the colours, and gradually the design grew clearer.

And every morning, as soon as she had fed her chickens, she went up to Kilmore to watch the workmen. She was there when the first spadeful of earth was thrown up, and as soon as the walls showed above the ground she began to ask the workmen how long it would take them to reach the windows, and if a workman put down his trowel and wandered from his work she would tell him it was God he was cheating; and later on, when the priest's money began to come to an end he could not pay the workmen full wages, she told them they were working for God's Own House, and that He would reward them in the next world.

"Hold your tongue," said a mason. "If you want the church built why don't you give the priest the money you're saving, and let him pay us?"

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, Pat Murphy. It isn't for myself I am keeping it back. Isn't it all going to be spent?"

The walls were now built, and amid the clatter of the slater's hammers Biddy began to tell the plasterers of the beautiful pictures that would be seen in her window; and she gabbled on, mixing up her memories of the different windows she had seen, until at last her chatter grew wearisome, and they threw bits of mortar, laughing at her for a crazy old woman, or the priest would suddenly come upon them, and they would scatter in all directions, leaving him with Biddy.

"What were they saying to you, Biddy?"

"They were saying, your reverence, that America is a great place."

"You spend a great deal of your time here, Biddy, and I suppose you are beginning to see that it takes a long time to build a church. Now you are not listening to what I am saying. You are thinking about your window; but you must have a house before you can have a window."

"I know that very well, your reverence; but, you see, God has given us the house."

"God's House consists of little more than walls and a roof."

"Indeed it does, your reverence; and amn't I saving up all my money for the window?"

"But, my good Biddy, there is hardly any plastering done yet. The laths have come in, and there isn't sufficient to fill that end of the church, and I have no more money."

"Won't you reverence be getting the rest of the money in America? And I am thinking a bazaar would be a good thing. Wouldn't we all be making scapulars, and your reverence might get medals that the Pope had blessed."

Eventually he drove her out of the church with his umbrella. But as his anger cooled he began to think that perhaps Biddy was right—a bazaar might be a good thing, and a distribution of medals and scapulars might induce his workmen to do some overtime. He went to Dublin to talk over this matter with some pious Catholics, and an old lady wrote a cheque for fifty pounds, two or three others subscribed smaller sums, and the plasterers were busy all next week. But these subscriptions did not go nearly as far towards completing the work as he had expected. The architect had led him astray, and he looked around the vast barn that he had built and despaired. It seemed to him it would never be finished in his lifetime. A few weeks after he was again running short of money, and he was speaking to his workmen one Saturday afternoon, telling them how they could obtain a plenary indulgence by subscribing so much towards the building of the church, and by going to Confession and Communion on the first Sunday of the month, and if they could not afford the money they could give their work. He was telling them how much could be done if every workman were to do each day an hour of overtime, when Biddy suddenly appeared, and, standing in front of the men, she raised up her hands and said they should not pass her until they had pledged themselves to come to work on Monday.

"But haven't we got our wives and little ones, and haven't we to think of them?" said a workman.

"Ah, one can live on very little when one is doing the work of God," said Biddy.

The man called her a vain old woman, who was starving herself so that she might put up a window, and they pushed her aside and went away, saying they had to think of their wives and children.

The priest turned upon her angrily and asked her what she meant by interfering between him and his workmen.

"Now, don't be angry with me, your reverence. I will say a prayer, and you will say a word or two in your sermon to-morrow."

And he spoke in his sermon of the disgrace it would be to Kilmore if the church remained unfinished. The news would go over to America, and what priest would be ever able to get money there again to build a church?

"Do you think a priest likes to go about the barrooms asking for dollars and half-dollars? Would you make his task more unpleasant? If I have to go to America again, what answer shall I make if they say to me: 'Well, didn't your workmen leave you at Kilmore? They don't want churches at Kilmore. Why should we give you money for a church?'"

There was a great deal of talking that night in Michael Dunne's, and they were all of one mind, that it would be a disgrace to Kilmore if the church were not finished; but no one could see that he could work for less wages than he was in the habit of getting. As the evening wore on the question of indulgences was raised, and Ned Kavanagh said:—

"The devil a bit of use going against the priest, and the indulgences will do us no harm."

"The devil a bit, but maybe a great deal of good," said Peter M'Shane, and an hour later they were staggering down the road swearing they would stand by the priest till the death.

But on Monday morning nearly all were in their beds; only half a dozen came to the work, and the priest sent them away, except one plasterer. There was one plasterer who, he thought, could stand on the scaffold. "If I were to fall I'd go straight to Heaven," the plasterer said, and he stood so near the edge, and his knees seemed so weak under him, that Biddy thought he was going to fall.

"It would be better for you to finish what you are doing; the Holy Virgin will be more thankful to you."

"Aye, maybe she would," he said, and he continued his work mechanically.

He was working at the clustered columns about the window Biddy had chosen for her stained glass, and she did not take her eyes off him. The priest returned a little before twelve o'clock, as the plasterer was going to his dinner, and he asked him if he were feeling better.

"I'm all right, your reverence, and it won't occur again."

"I hope he won't go down to Michael Dunne's during his dinner hour," he said to Biddy. "If you see any further sign of drink upon him when he comes back you must tell me."

"He is safe enough, your reverence. Wasn't he telling me while your reverence was having your breakfast that if he fell down he would go straight to Heaven, and he opened his shirt and showed me he was wearing the scapular of the Holy Virgin."

And Biddy began to advocate a sale of scapulars.

"A sale of scapulars will not finish my church. You're all a miserly lot here, you want everything done for you."

"Weren't you telling me, your reverence, that a pious lady in Dublin—"

"The work is at a stand-still. If I were to go to America to-morrow it would be no use unless I could tell them it was progressing."

"Sure they don't ask any questions in America, they just give their money."

"If they do, that's more than you're doing at home. I want to know, Biddy, what you are going to do for this church. You're always talking about it; you're always here and you have given less than any one else."

"Didn't I offer your reverence a sovereign once since I gave you the five pounds?"

"You don't seem to understand, Biddy, that you can't put up your window until the plastering is finished."

"I think I understand that well enough, but the church will be finished."

"How will it be finished? When will it be finished?"

She did not answer, and nothing was heard in the still church but her irritating little cough.

"You're very obstinate. Well, tell me where you would like to have your window."

"It is there I shall be kneeling, and if you will let me put my window there I shall see it when I look up from my beads. I should like to see the Virgin and I should like to see St. John with her. And don't you think, your reverence, we might have St. Joseph as well. Our Lord would have to be in the Virgin's arms, and I think, your reverence, I would like Our Lord coming down to judge us, and I should like to have Him on His throne on the day of Judgment up at the top of the window."

"I can see you've been thinking a good deal about this window," the priest said.

She began again and the priest heard the names of the different saints she would like to see in stained glass, and he let her prattle on. But his temper boiled up suddenly and he said:—

"You'd go on like this till midnight if I let you. Now, Biddy M'Hale, you've been here all the morning delaying my workmen. Go home to your fowls."

And she ran away shrinking like a dog, and the priest walked up and down the unfinished church. "She tries my temper more than anyone I ever met," he said to himself. At that moment he heard some loose boards clanking, and thinking it was the old woman coming back he looked round, his eyes flaming. But the intruder was a short and square-set man, of the type that one sees in Germany, and he introduced himself as an agent of a firm of stained glass manufacturers. He told Father Maguire they had heard in Germany of the beautiful church he was building. "I met an old woman on the road, and she told me that I would find you in the church considering the best place for the window she was going to put up. She looks very poor."

"She's not as poor as she looks; she's been saving money all her life for this window. Her window is her one idea, and, like people of one idea, she's apt to become a little tiresome."

"I don't quite understand."

He began telling the story, and seeing that the German was interested in the old woman he began to acquire an interest in her himself, an unpremeditated interest; he had not suspected that Biddy was so interesting. The German said she reminded him of the quaint sculpture of Nuremburg, and her character reminded him of one of the German saints, and talking of Biddy and medievalism and Gothic art and stained glass the priest and the agent for the manufacture of stained glass in Munich walked up and down the unfinished church until the return of the plasterer reminded the priest of his embarrassments, and he took the German into his confidence.

"These embarrassments always occur," said the agent, "but there is no such thing as an unfinished church in Ireland; if you were to let her put up the window subscriptions would pour in."

"How's that?"

"A paragraph in the newspaper describing the window, the gift of a local saint. I think you told me her name was M'Hale, and that she lives in the village."

"Yes, you pass her house on the way to the station."

The German took his leave abruptly, and when he was half-way down the hill he asked some children to direct him.

"Is it Biddy M'Hale, that has all the hins, and is going to put up a window in the church, that you're wanting?"

The German said that that was the woman he wanted, and the eldest child said:—

"You will see her feeding her chickens, and you must call to her over the hedge."

And he did as he was bidden.

"Madam ... the priest has sent me to show you some designs for a stained glass window."

No one had ever addressed Biddy as Madam before. She hastened to let him into the house, and wiped the table clean so that he could spread the designs upon it. The first designs he showed here were the four Evangelists, but he would like a woman's present to her church to be in a somewhat lighter style, and he showed her a picture of St. Cecilia that fascinated her for a time; and then he suggested that a group of figures would look handsomer than a single figure. But she could not put aside the idea of the window that had grown up in her mind, and after some attempts to persuade her to accept a design they had in stock he had to give way and listen.

At the top of the picture, where the window narrowed to a point, Our Lord sat dressed in white on a throne, placing a golden crown on the head of the Virgin kneeling before him. About him were the women who had loved him, and the old woman said she was sorry she was not a nun, and hoped that Christ would not think less of her. As far as mortal sin was concerned she could say she had never committed one. At the bottom of the window there were suffering souls. The cauldrons that Biddy wished to see them in, the agent said, would be difficult to introduce—the suffering of the souls could be artistically indicated by flames.

"I shall have great joy," she said, "seeing the blessed women standing about our Divine Lord, singing hymns in His praise, and the sight of sinners broiling will make me be sorrowful."

She insisted on telling the German of the different churches she had visited, and the windows she had seen, and she did not notice that he was turning over his designs and referring to his note book while she was talking. Suddenly he said:—

"Excuse me, but I think we have got the greater part of the window you wish for in stock, and the rest can be easily made up. Now the only question that remains is the question of the colours you care about."

"I have always thought there's no colour like blue. I'd like the Virgin to wear a blue cloak."

She did not know why she had chosen that colour, but the agent told her that she was quite right; blue signified chastity; and when the German had gone she sat thinking of the Virgin and her cloak. The Minorcas, and Buff Orpingtons, and Plymouth Rocks came through the door cackling, and while feeding them she sat, her eyes fixed on the beautiful evening sky, wondering if the blue in the picture would be as pale, or if it would be a deeper blue.

She remembered suddenly that she used to wear a blue ribbon when she went blackberrying among the hills; she found it in an old box and tied it round her neck. The moment she put it on her memory was as if lighted up with the memories of the saints and the miracles they had performed, and she went to Father Maguire to tell him of the miracle. That the agent should have in stock the very window she had imagined seemed a miracle, and she was encouraged to think some miraculous thing had happened when the priest asked her to tell him exactly what her window was like. She had often told him before but he had never listened to her. But now he recognised her window as an adaptation of Fra Angelico's picture, and he told her how the saint had wandered from monastery to monastery painting pictures on the walls. More he could not tell her, but he promised to procure a small biography of the saint. She received the book a few days after, and as she turned over the leaves she heard the children coming home from school, and she took the book out to them, for her sight was failing, and they read bits of it aloud, and she frightened them by dropping on her knees and crying out that God had been very good to her.

She wandered over the country visiting churches, returning to Kilmore suddenly. She was seen as usual at sunrise and at sunset feeding her poultry, and then she went away again, and the next time she was heard of was in a church near Dublin celebrated for its stained glass. A few days after Ned Kavanagh met her hurrying up the road from the station, and she told him she had just received a letter from the Munich agent saying he had forwarded her window. It was to arrive to-morrow.

It was expected some time about mid-day, but Biddy's patience was exhausted long before, and she walked a great part of the way to Dublin to meet the dray. She returned with it, walking with the draymen, but within three miles of Kilmore she was so tired that they had to put her on the top of the boxes, and a cheer went up from the villagers when she was lifted down. She called to the workmen to be careful in unpacking the glass; and when they were putting it up she went down on her knees and prayed that no accident might happen.

At sunset the church had to be closed, and it was with difficulty that she was persuaded to leave it. Next morning at sunrise she was knocking at the door of the woman who was charged with the cleaning of the church, asking for the key.

And from that day she was hardly ever out of the church; the charwoman began to complain that she could not get on with her work, and she was telling the priest that Biddy was always at her elbow, asking her to come to her window, saying she would show her things she had not seen before, when their conversation was interrupted by Biddy. She seemed a little astray, a little exalted, and Father Maguire watched her as she knelt with uplifted face, telling her beads. He noticed that her fingers very soon ceased to move; and that she held the same bead a long time between her fingers. Minutes passed, but her lips did not move; her eyes were fixed on the panes and her look was so enraptured that he began to wonder if Paradise were being revealed to her.

And while the priest wondered, Biddy listened to music inconceivably tender. She had been awakened from her prayers by the sound of a harp string touched very gently; and the note had floated down like a flower, and all the vibrations were not dead when the same note floated down the aisles once more. Biddy listened, anxious to hear it a third time. Once more she heard it, and the third time she saw the saint's fingers moving over the strings; and she played a little tune of six notes. And it was at the end of the second playing of the tune that the priest touched Biddy on the shoulder. She looked up and it was a long while before she saw him, and she was greatly grieved that she had been awakened from her dream. She said it was a dream because her happiness had been so great; and she stood looking at the priest, fain, but unable, to tell how she had been borne beyond her usual life, that her whole being had answered to the music the saint played, and looking at him, she wondered what would have happened if he had not awakened her.

Next day was Sunday, and she was in the church at sunrise listening for the music. But she heard and saw nothing until the priest had reached the middle of the Mass. The acolyte had rung the bell to prepare the people for the Elevation, and it was then that she heard a faint low sound that the light wire emitted when the saint touched her harp, and she noticed that it was the same saint that had played yesterday, the tall saint with the long fair hair who stood apart from the others, looking more intently at Our Blessed Lord than the others. She touched her harp again and the note vibrated for a long while, and when the last vibrations died she touched the string again. The note was sweet and languid and intense, and it pierced to the very core of Biddy. The saint's hand passed over the strings, producing faint exquisite sounds, so faint that Biddy felt no surprise they were not heard by anyone else; it was only by listening intently that she could hear them. Yesterday's little tune appeared again, a little tune of six notes, and it seemed to Biddy even more exquisite than it had seemed when she first heard it. The only difference between to-day and yesterday was, that to-day all the saints struck their harps, and after playing for some time the music grew white like snow and remote as star-fire, and yet Biddy heard it more clearly than she had heard anything before, and she saw Our Lord more clearly than she had ever seen anybody else. She saw Him look up when He had placed the crown on His Mother's head; she heard Him sing a few notes, and then the saints began to sing. The window filled up with song and colour, and all along the window there was a continual transmutation of colour and song. The figures grew taller, and they breathed extraordinary life. It sang like a song within them, and it flowed about them and out of them in a sort of pearl-coloured mist. The vision clove the church along and across, and through it she could see the priest saying his Mass, and when he raised the Host above his head, Biddy saw Our Lord look at her, and His eyes brightened as if with love of her. He seemed to have forgotten the saints that sang His praises so beautifully, and when He bent towards her and she felt His presence about her, she cried out:—

"He is coming to take me in His arms!"

And it was then that Biddy fell out of her place and lay at length on the floor of the church, pale as a dead woman. The clerk went to her, but he could not carry her out; she lay rigid as one who had been dead a long while and she muttered, "He is coming to put the gold crown on my head." The clerk moved away, and she swooned again.

Her return to her ordinary perceptions was slow and painful. The people had left long ago, and she tottered out of the empty church and followed the road to her cabin without seeing it or the people whom she met on the road. At last a woman took her by the arm and led her into her cabin, and spoke to her. She could not answer at first, but she awoke gradually, and she began to remember that she had heard music in the window and that Our Lord had sung to her. The neighbour left her babbling. She began to feed her chickens, and was glad when she had fed them. She wanted to think of the great and wonderful sights she had seen. She could not particularise, preferring to remember her vision as a whole, unwilling to separate the music from the colour, or the colour and the music from the adoration of the saints.

As the days went by her life seemed to pass more and more out of the life of the ordinary day. She seemed to live, as it were, on the last verge of human life; the mortal and the immortal mingled; she felt she had been always conscious of the immortal, and that nothing had happened except the withdrawing of a veil. The memory of her vision was still intense in her, but she wished to renew it; and waited next Sunday breathless with anticipation. The vision began at the same moment, the signal was the same as before; the note from the harp string floated down the aisles and when it had been repeated three times the saintly fingers moved over the strings, and she heard the beautiful little tune.

Every eye was upon her, and forgetful of the fact that the priest was celebrating Mass, they said, "Look, she hears the saints singing about her. She sees Christ coming." The priest heard Biddy cry out "Christ is coming," and she fell prone and none dared to raise her up, and she lay there till the Mass was finished. When the priest left the altar she was still lying at length, and the people were about her; and knowing how much she would feel the slightest reproof, he did not say a word that would throw doubt on her statement. He did not like to impugn a popular belief, but he felt obliged to exercise clerical control.

"Now, Biddy, I know you are a very pious woman, but I cannot allow you to interrupt the Mass."

"If the Lord comes to me am I not to receive Him, your reverence?"

"In the first place I object to your dress; you are not properly dressed."

She wore a bright blue cloak, she seemed to wear hardly anything else, and tresses of dirty hair hung over her shoulders.

"The Lord has not said anything to me about my dress, your reverence, and He put His gold crown on my head to-day."

"Biddy, is all this true?"

"As true as you're standing there."

"I am not asking you if your visions are true. I have my opinion about that. I am asking if they are true to you."

"True to me, your reverence? I don't rightly understand."

"I want to know if you think Our Lord put a gold crown on your head to-day."

"To be sure He did, your reverence."

"If He did, where is it?"

"Where is it, your reverence? It is with Him, to be sure. He wouldn't be leaving it on my head and me walking about the parish—that would not be reasonable at all, I am thinking. He doesn't want me to be robbed."

"There is no one in the parish who would rob you."

"Maybe some one would come out of another parish, if I was walking about with a gold crown on my head. And such a crown as He put upon it!—I am sorry you did not see it, but your reverence was saying the holy Mass at the time."

And she fell on her knees and clung to his cassock.

"And you saw the crown, Biddy?"

"I had it on my head, your reverence."

"And you heard the saints singing?"

"Yes, and I will tell you what they were singing," and she began crooning. "Something like that, your reverence. You don't believe me, but we have only our ears and our eyes to guide us."

"I don't say I don't believe you, Biddy, but you may be deceived."

"Sorra deceiving, your reverence, or I've been deceived all my life. And now, your reverence, if you have no more business with me I will go, for they are waiting in the chapel yard to hear me tell them about the crown that was put upon my head."

"Well, Biddy, I want you to understand that I cannot have you interrupting the Mass. I cannot permit it. The visions may be true, or not true, but you must not interrupt the Mass. Do you hear me?"

The acolyte had opened the door of the sacristy, she slipped through it, and the priest took off his cassock. As he did so, he noticed that the acolytes were anxious to get out; they were at the window watching, and when the priest looked out of the window he saw the people gathered about Biddy, and could see she had obtained an extraordinary hold on the popular imagination; no one noticed him when he came out of the sacristy; they were listening to Biddy, and he stood unnoticed amid the crowd for a few minutes.

"She's out of her mind," he said. "She's as good as mad. What did she tell me—that Our Lord put a crown on her head."

It was difficult to know what to do. News of her piety had reached Dublin. People had been down to Kilmore to see her and had given subscriptions, and he understood that Biddy had enabled him to furnish his church with varnished pews and holy pictures. A pious Catholic lady had sent him two fine statues of Our Lady and St. Joseph. St. Joseph was in a purple cloak and Our Lady wore a blue cloak, and there were gold stars upon it. He had placed these two statues on the two side altars. But there were many things he wanted for his church, and he could only get them through Biddy. It was, therefore, his interest to let her remain in Kilmore, only she could not be allowed to interrupt the Mass, and he felt that he must be allowed to pass in and out of his church without having to put up with extravagant salutations.

He was going home to his breakfast and a young man extremely interested in ecclesiastical art was coming to breakfast with him. The young man had a great deal to say about Walter Pater and Chartres Cathedral, and Father Maguire feared he was cutting but a very poor figure in the eyes of this young man, for he could not keep his thoughts on what the young man was saying, he was thinking of Biddy; he hardly thought of anything else but her now; she was absorbing the mind of his entire parish, she interrupted the Mass, he could not go into his church without being accosted by this absurd old woman, and this young man, a highly cultivated young man, who had just come from Italy, and who took the highest interest in architecture, would not be able to see his church in peace. As soon as they entered it they would be accosted by this old woman; she would follow them about asking them to look at her window, telling them her visions, which might or might not be true. She had a knack of hiding herself—he often came upon her suddenly behind the pillars, and sometimes he found her in the confessional. As soon as he crossed the threshold he began to look for her, and not finding her in any likely place, his fears subsided, and he called the young man's attention to the altar that had been specially designed for his church. And the young man had begun to tell the priest of the altars he had seen that Spring in Italy, when suddenly he uttered a cry, he had suddenly felt a hand upon his shoulder.

"Your honour will be well rewarded if you will come to my window. Now why should I tell you a lie, your reverence?"

She threw herself at the priest's feet and besought him to believe that the saints had been with her, and that every word she was speaking was the truth.

"Biddy, if you don't go away at once I will not allow you inside the church to-morrow."

The young man looked at the priest, surprised at his sternness, and the priest said:—

"She has become a great trial to us at Kilmore. Come aside and I will tell you about her."

And when the priest had told the young man about the window the young man asked if Biddy would have to be sent away.

"I hope not, for if she were separated from her window she would certainly die. It came out of her savings, out of the money she made out of chickens."

"And what has become of the chickens?"

"She has forgotten all about them; they wandered away or died. She has been evicted, and she lives now in an out-house. She lives on the bits of bread and the potatoes the neighbours give her. The things of this world are no longer realities to her. Her realities are what she sees and hears in that window. She told me last night the saints were singing about her. I don't like to encourage her to talk, but if you would like to hear her—Biddy, come here!"

The old woman came back as a dog comes to its master, joyful, and with brightening eyes.

"Tell us what you saw last night."

"Well, your reverence, I was asleep, and there suddenly came a knocking at the door, and I got up, and then I head a voice say, 'Open the door.' There was a beautiful young man outside, his hair was yellow and curly, and he was dressed in white. He came into the room first, and he was followed by other saints, and they had harps in their hands, and they sang for a long while; they sang beautiful music. Come to the window and you will hear it for yourselves. Someone is always singing it in the window, not always as clearly as they did last night."

"We'll go to see your window presently."

The old woman crept back to her place, and the priest and the young man began to talk about the possibilities of miracles in modern times, and they talked on until the sudden sight of Biddy gave them pause.

"Look at her," said the young man, "can you doubt that she sees Heaven, quite plainly, and that the saints visited her just as she told us?"

"No doubt, no doubt. But she's a great trial to us at Mass .... The Mass must not be interrupted."

"I suppose even miracles are inconvenient at times, Father Maguire. Be patient with her, let her enjoy her happiness."

And the two men stood looking at her, trying vainly to imagine what her happiness might be.

CHAPTER III

THE EXILE

I

Pat Phelan's bullocks were ready for the fair, and so were his pigs; but the two fairs happened to come on the same day, and he thought he would like to sell the pigs himself. His eldest son, James, was staying at home to help Catherine Ford with her churning; Peter, his second son, was not much of a hand at a bargain; it was Pat and James who managed the farm, and when Peter had gone to bed they began to wonder if Peter would be able to sell the bullocks. Pat said Peter had been told the lowest price he could take, James said there was a good demand for cattle, and at last they decided that Peter could not fail to sell the beasts.

Pat was to meet Peter at the cross-roads about twelve o'clock in the day. But he had sold his pigs early, and was half an hour in front of him, and sitting on the stile waiting for his son, he thought if Peter got thirteen pounds apiece for the bullocks he would say he had done very well. A good jobber, he thought, would be able to get ten shillings apiece more for them; and he went on thinking of what price Peter would get, until, suddenly looking up the road, whom should he see but Peter coming down the road with the bullocks in front of him. He could hardly believe his eyes, and it was a long story that Peter told him about two men who wanted to buy the bullocks early in the morning. They had offered him eleven pounds ten, and when he would not sell them at that price they had stood laughing at the bullocks and doing all they could to keep off other buyers. Peter was quite certain it was not his fault, and he began to argue. But Pat Phelan was too disappointed to argue with him, and he let him go on talking. At last Peter ceased talking, and this seemed to Pat Phelan a good thing.

The bullocks trotted in front of them. They were seven miles from home, and fifteen miles are hard on fat animals, and he could truly say he was at a loss of three pounds that day if he took into account the animals' keep.

Father and son walked on, and not a word passed between them till they came to Michael Quinn's public-house. "Did you get three pounds apiece for the pigs, father?"

"I did, and three pounds five."

"We might have a drink out of that."

It seemed to Peter that the men inside were laughing at him or at the lemonade he was drinking, and, seeing among them one who had been interfering with him all day, he told him he would put him out of the house, and he would have done it if Mrs. Quinn had not told him that no one put a man out of her house without her leave.

"Do you hear that, Peter Phelan?"

"If you can't best them at the fair," said his father, "it will be little good for you to put them out of the public-house afterwards."

And on that Peter swore he would never go to a fair again, and they walked on until they came to the priest's house.

"It was bad for me when I listened to you and James. If I hadn't I might have been in Maynooth now."

"Now, didn't you come home talking of the polis?"

"Wasn't that after?"

They could not agree as to when his idea of life had changed from the priesthood to the police, nor when it had changed back from the police to the priesthood, and Peter talked on, telling of the authors he had read with Father Tom—Caesar, Virgil, even Quintillian. The priest had said that Quintillian was too difficult for him, and Pat Phelan was in doubt whether the difficulty of Quintillian was a sufficient reason for preferring the police to the priesthood.

"Any way it isn't a girl that's troubling him," he said to himself, and he looked at Peter, and wondered how it was that Peter did not want to be married. Peter was a great big fellow, over six feet high, that many a girl would take a fancy to, and Pat Phelan had long had his eye on a girl who would marry him. And his failure to sell the bullocks brought all the advantages of this marriage to Pat Phelan's mind, and he began to talk to his son. Peter listened, and seemed to take an interest in all that was said, expressing now and then a doubt if the girl would marry him; the possibility that she might seemed to turn his thoughts again towards the priesthood.

The bullocks had stopped to graze, and Peter's indecisions threw Pat Phelan fairly out of his humour.

"Well, Peter, I am tired listening to you. If it's a priest you want to be, go in there, and Father Tom will tell you what you must do, and I'll drive the bullocks home myself." And on that Pat laid his hand on the priest's green gate, and Peter walked through.

II

There were trees about the priest's house, and there were two rooms on the right and left of the front door. The parlour was on the left, and when Peter came in the priest was sitting reading in his mahogany arm-chair. Peter wondered if it were this very mahogany chair that had put the idea of being a priest into his head. Just now, while walking with his father, he had been thinking that they had not even a wooden arm-chair in their house, though it was the best house in the village—only some stools and some plain wooden chairs.

The priest could see that Peter had come to him for a purpose. But Peter did not speak; he sat raising his pale, perplexed eyes, looking at the priest from time to time, thinking that if he told Father Tom of his failure at the fair, Father Tom might think he only wished to become a priest because he had no taste for farming.

"You said, Father Tom, if I worked hard I should be able to read Quintillian in six months."

The priest's face always lighted up at the name of a classical author, and Peter said he was sorry he had been taken away from his studies. But he had been thinking the matter over, and his mind was quite made up, and he was sure he would sooner be a priest than anything else.

"My boy, I knew you would never put on the policeman's belt. The Bishop will hold an examination for the places that are vacant in Maynooth." Peter promised to work hard and he already saw himself sitting in an arm-chair, in a mahogany arm-chair, reading classics, and winning admiration for his learning.

He walked home, thinking that everything was at last decided, when suddenly, without warning, when he was thinking of something else, his heart misgave him. It was as if he heard a voice saying: "My boy, I don't think you will ever put on the cassock. You will never walk with the biretta on your head." The priest had said that he did not believe he would ever buckle on the policeman's belt. He was surprised to hear the priest say this, though he had often heard himself thinking the same thing. What surprised and frightened him now was that he heard himself saying he would never put on the cassock and the biretta. It is frightening to hear yourself saying you are not going to do the thing you have just made up your mind you will do.

He had often thought he would like to put the money he would get out of the farm into a shop, but when it came to the point of deciding he had not been able to make up his mind. He had always had a great difficulty in knowing what was the right thing to do. His uncle William had never thought of anything but the priesthood. James never thought of anything but the farm. A certain friend of his had never thought of doing anything but going to America. Suddenly he heard some one call him.

It was Catherine, and Peter wondered if she were thinking to tell him she was going to marry James. For she always knew what she wanted. Many said that James was not the one she wanted, but Peter did not believe that, and he looked at Catherine and admired her face, and thought what a credit she would be to the family. No one wore such beautifully knitted stockings as Catherine, and no one's boots were so prettily laced.

But not knowing exactly what to say, he asked her if she had come from their house, and he went on talking, telling her that she would find nobody in the parish like James. James was the best farmer in the parish, none such a judge of cattle; and he said all this and a great deal more, until he saw that Catherine did not care to talk about James at all.

"I daresay all you say is right, Peter; but you see he's your brother."

And then, fearing she had said something hurtful, she told him that she liked James as much as a girl could like a man who was not going to be her husband.

"And you are sure, Catherine, that James is not going to be your husband?"

"Yes," she said, "quite sure."

Their talk had taken them as far as Catherine's door, and Peter went away wondering why he had not told her he was going to Maynooth; for no one would have been able to advise him as well as Catherine, she had such good sense.

III

There was a quarter of a mile between the two houses, and while Peter was talking to Catherine, Pat Phelan was listening to his son James, who was telling his father that Catherine had said she would not marry him.

Pat was over sixty, but he did not give one the impression of an old man. The hair was not grey, there was still a little red in the whiskers. James, who sat opposite to him, holding his hands to the blaze, was not as good-looking a man as his father, the nose was not as fine, nor were the eyes as keen. There was more of the father in Peter than in James.

When Peter opened the half-door, awaking the dozen hens that roosted on the beam, he glanced from one to the other, for he suspected that his father was telling James how he had failed to sell the bullocks. But the tone of his father's voice when he asked him what had detained him on the road told him he was mistaken; and then he remembered that Catherine had said she would not marry James, and he began to pity his brother.

"I met Catherine on the road, and I could do no less than walk as far as her door with her."

"You could do no less than that, Peter," said James.

"And what do you mean by that, James?"

"Only this, that it is always the crooked way, Peter; for if it had been you that had asked her she would have had you and jumping."

"She would have had me!"

"And now don't you think you had better run after her, Peter, and ask her if she'll have you?"

"I'll never do that; and it is hurtful, James, that you should think such a thing of me, that I would go behind your back and try to get a girl from you."

"I did not mean that, Peter; but if she won't have me, you had better try if you can get her."

And suddenly Peter felt a resolve come into his heart, and his manner grew exultant.

"I've seen Father Tom, and he said I can pass the examination. I'm going to be a priest."

And when they were lying down side by side Peter said, "James, it will be all right." Knowing there was a great heart-sickness on his brother, he put out his hand. "As sure as I lie here she will be lying next you before this day twelvemonths. Yes, James, in this very bed, lying here where I am lying now."

"I don't believe it, Peter."

Peter loved his brother, and to bring the marriage about he took some money from his father and went to live at Father Tom's, and he worked so hard during the next two months that he passed the Bishop's examination. And it was late one night when he went to bid them good-bye at home.

"What makes you so late, Peter?"

"Well, James, I didn't want to meet Catherine on the road."

"You are a good boy, Peter," said the father, "and God will reward you for the love you bear your brother. I don't think there are two better men in the world. God has been good to me to give me two such sons."

And then the three sat round the fire, and Pat Phelan began to talk family history.

"Well, Peter, you see, there has always been a priest in the family, and it would be a pity if there's not one in this generation. In '48 your grand-uncles joined the rebels, and they had to leave the country. You have an uncle a priest, and you are just like your uncle William."

And then James talked, but he did not seem to know very well what he was saying, and his father told him to stop—that Peter was going where God had called him.

"And you will tell her," Peter said, getting up, "that I have gone."

"I haven't the heart for telling her such a thing. She will be finding it out soon enough."

Outside the house—for he was sleeping at Father Tom's that night—Peter thought there was little luck in James's eyes; inside the house Pat Phelan and James thought that Peter was settled for life.

"He will be a fine man standing on an altar," James said, "and perhaps he will be a bishop some day."

"And you'll see her when you're done reaping, and you won't forget what Peter told you," said Pat Phelan.

And, after reaping, James put on his coat and walked up the hillside, where he thought he would find Catherine.

"I hear Peter has left you," she said, as he opened the gate to let the cows through.

"He came last night to bid us good-bye."

And they followed the cows under the tall hedges.

"I shall be reaping to-morrow," he said. "I will see you at the same time."

And henceforth he was always at hand to help her to drive her cows home; and every night, as he sat with his father by the fire, Pat Phelan expected James to tell him about Catherine. One evening he came back overcome, looking so wretched that his father could see that Catherine had told him she would not marry him.

"She won't have me," he said.

"A man can always get a girl if he tries long enough," his father said, hoping to encourage him.

"That would be true enough for another. Catherine knows she will never get Peter. Another man might get her, but I'm always reminding her of Peter."

She told him the truth one day, that if she did not marry Peter she would marry no one, and James felt like dying. He grew pale and could not speak.

At last he said, "How is that?"

"I don't know. I don't know, James. But you mustn't talk to me about marriage again."

And he had to promise her not to speak of marriage again, and he kept his word. At the end of the year she asked him if he had any news of Peter.

"The last news we had of him was about a month ago, and he said he hoped to be admitted into the minor orders."

And a few days afterwards he heard that Catherine had decided to go into a convent.

"So this is the way it has ended," he thought. And he seemed no longer fit for work on the farm. He was seen about the road smoking, and sometimes he went down to the ball-alley, and sat watching the games in the evening. It was thought that he would take to drink, but he took to fishing instead, and was out all day in his little boat on the lake, however hard the wind might blow. The fisherman said he had seen him in the part of the lake where the wind blew the hardest, and that he could hardly pull against the waves.

"His mind is away. I don't think he'll do any good in this country," his father said.

And the old man was very sad, for when James was gone he would have no one, and he did not feel he would be able to work the farm for many years longer. He and James used to sit smoking on either side of the fireplace, and Pat Phelan knew that James was thinking of America all the while. One evening, as they were sitting like this, the door was opened suddenly.

"Peter!" said James. And he jumped up from the fire to welcome his brother.

"It is good for sore eyes to see the sight of you again," said Pat Phelan. "Well, tell us the news. If we had known you were coming we would have sent the cart to meet you."

As Peter did not answer, they began to think that something must have happened. Perhaps Peter was not going to become a priest after all, and would stay at home with his father to learn to work the farm.

"You see, I did not know myself until yesterday. It was only yesterday that—"

"So you are not going to be a priest? We are glad to hear that, Peter."

"How is that?"

He had thought over what he should say, and without waiting to hear why they were glad, he told them the professor, who overlooked his essays, had refused to recognize their merits—he had condemned the best things in them; and Peter said it was extraordinary that such a man should be appointed to such a place. Then he told that the Church afforded little chances for the talents of young men unless they had a great deal of influence.

And they sat listening to him, hearing how the college might be reformed. He had a gentle, winning way of talking, and his father and brother forgot their own misfortunes thinking how they might help him.

"Well, Peter, you have come back none too soon."

"And how is that? What have you been doing since I went away? You all wanted to hear about Maynooth."

"Of course we did, my boy. Tell him, James."

"Oh! it is nothing particular," said James. "It is only this, Peter—I am going to America."

"And who will work the farm?"

"Well, Peter, we were thinking that you might work it yourself."

"I work the farm! Going to America, James! But what about Catherine?"

"That's what I'm coming to, Peter. She has gone into a convent. And that's what's happened since you went away. I can't stop here, Peter—I will never do a hand's turn in Ireland—and father is getting too old to go to the fairs. That's what we were thinking when you came in."

There was a faint tremble in his voice, and Peter saw how heart-sick his brother was.

"I will do my best, James."

"I knew you would."

"Yes, I will," said Peter; and he sat down by the fire.

And his father said:—

"You are not smoking, Peter."

"No," he said; "I've given up smoking."

"Will you drink something?" said James. "We have got a drain of whiskey in the house."

"No, I have had to give up spirits. It doesn't agree with me. And I don't take tea in the morning. Have you got any cocoa in the house?"

It was not the cocoa he liked, but he said he would be able to manage.

IV

And when the old man came through the doorway in the morning buttoning his braces, he saw Peter stirring his cocoa. There was something absurd as well as something attractive in Peter, and his father had to laugh when he said he couldn't eat American bacon.

"My stomach wouldn't retain it. I require very little, but that little must be the best."

And when James took him into the farmyard, he noticed that Peter crossed the yard like one who had never been in a farmyard before; he looked less like a farmer than ever, and when he looked at the cows, James wondered if he could be taught to see the difference between an Alderney and a Durham.

"There's Kate," he said; "she's a good cow; as good a cow as we have, and we can't get any price for her because of that hump on her back."

They went to the styes; there were three pigs there and a great sow with twelve little bonhams, and the little ones were white with silky hair, and Peter asked how old they were, and when they would be fit for killing. And James told Peter there were seven acres in the Big field.

"Last year we had oats in the Holly field; next year you'll sow potatoes there." And he explained the rotation of crops. "And, now," he said, "we will go down to Crow's Oak. You have never done any ploughing, Peter; I will show you."

It was extraordinary how little Peter knew. He could not put the harness on the horse, and he reminded James that he had gone into the post-office when he left school. James gave in to him that the old red horse was hard to drive, but James could drive him better than Peter could lead him; and Peter marvelled at the skill with which James raised his hand from the shaft of the plough and struck the horse with the rein whilst he kept the plough steady with the other hand.

"Now, Peter, you must try again."

At the end of the headland where the plough turned, Peter always wanted to stop and talk about something; but James said they would have to get on with the work, and Peter walked after the plough, straining after it for three hours, and then he said: "James, let me drive the horse. I can do no more."

"You won't feel it so much when you are accustomed to it," said James.

Anything seemed to him better than a day's ploughing: even getting up at three in the morning to go to a fair.

He went to bed early, as he used to, and they talked of him over the fire, as they used to. But however much they talked, they never seemed to find what they were seeking—his vocation—until one evening an idea suddenly rose out of their talk.

"A good wife is the only thing for Peter," said Pat.

And they went on thinking.

"A husband would be better for her," said Pat Phelan, "than a convent."

"I cannot say I agree with you there. Think of all the good them nuns are doing."

"She isn't a nun yet," said Pat Phelan.

And the men smoked on a while, and they ruminated as they smoked.

"It would be better, James, that Peter got her than that she should stay in a convent."

"I wouldn't say that," said James.

"You see," said his father, "she did not go into the convent because she had a calling, but because she was crossed in love."

And after another long while James said, "It is a bitter dose, I am thinking, father, but you must go and tell her that Peter has left Maynooth."

"And what would the Reverend Mother be saying to me if I went to her with such a story as that? Isn't your heart broken enough already, James, without wanting me to be breaking it still more? Sure, James, you could never see her married to Peter?"

"If she were to marry Peter I should be able to go to America, and that is the only thing for me."

"That would be poor consolation for you, James."

"Well, it is the best I shall get, to see Peter settled, and to know that there will be some one to look after you, father."

"You are a good son, James."

They talked on, and as they talked it became clearer to them that some one must go to-morrow to the convent and tell Catherine that Peter had left Maynooth.

"But wouldn't it be a pity," said Pat Phelan, "to tell her this if Peter is not going to marry her in the end?"

"I'll have him out of his bed," said James, "and he'll tell us before this fire if he will or won't."

"It's a serious thing you are doing, James, to get a girl out of a convent, I am thinking."

"It will be on my advice that you will be doing this, father; and now I'll go and get Peter out of his bed."

And Peter was brought in, asking what they wanted of him at this hour of the night; and when they told him what they had been talking about and the plans they had been making, he said he would be catching his death of cold, and they threw some sods of turf on the fire.

"It is against myself that I am asking a girl to leave the convent, even for you, Peter," said James. "But we can think of nothing else."

"Peter will be able to tell us if it is a sin that we'd be doing."

"It is only right that Catherine should know the truth before she made her vows," Peter said. "But this is very unexpected, father. I really—"

"Peter, I'd take it as a great kindness. I shall never do a hand's turn in this country. I want to get to America. It will be the saving of me."

"And now, Peter," said his father, "tell us for sure if you will have the girl?"

"Faith I will, though I never thought of marriage, if it be to please James." Seeing how heart-sick his brother was, he said, "I can't say I like her as you like her; but if she likes me I will promise to do right by her. James, you're going away; we may never see you again. It is all very sad. And now you'll let me go back to bed."

"Peter, I knew you would not say no to me; I can't bear this any longer."

"And now," said Peter, "let me go back to bed. I am catching my death."

And he ran back to his room, and left his brother and father talking by the fire.

V

Pat thought the grey mare would take him in faster than the old red horse; and the old man sat, his legs swinging over the shaft, wondering what he should say to the Reverend Mother, and how she would listen to his story; and when he came to the priest's house a great wish came upon him to ask the priest's advice. The priest was walking up his little lawn reading his breviary, and a great fear came on Pat Phelan, and he thought he must ask the priest what he should do.

The priest heard the story over the little wall, and he was sorry for the old man.

It took him a long time to tell the story, and when he was finished the priest said:—

"But where are you going, Pat?"

"That's what I stopped to tell you, your reverence. I was thinking I might be going to the convent to tell Catherine that Peter has come back."

"Well it wasn't yourself that thought of doing such a thing as that, Pat Phelan."

But at every word the priest said Pat Phelan's face grew more stubborn, and at last he said:—

"Well, your reverence, that isn't the advice I expected from you," and he struck the mare with the ends of the reins and let her trot up the hill. Nor did the mare stop trotting till she had reached the top of the hill, and Pat Phelan had never known her do such a thing before. From the top of the hill there was a view of the bog, and Pat thought of the many fine loads of turf he had had out of that bog, and the many young fellows he had seen there cutting turf. "But every one is leaving the country," the old man said to himself, and his chin dropped into his shirt-collar, and he held the reins loosely, letting the mare trot or walk as she liked. And he let many pass him without bidding them the hour of the day, for he was too much overcome by his own grief to notice anyone.

The mare trotted gleefully; soft clouds curled over the low horizon far away, and the sky was blue overhead; and the poor country was very beautiful in the still autumn weather, only it was empty. He passed two or three fine houses that the gentry had left to caretakers long ago. The fences were gone, cattle strayed through the woods, the drains were choked with weeds, the stagnant water was spreading out into the fields, and Pat Phelan noticed these things, for he remembered what this country was forty years ago. The devil a bit of lonesomeness there was in it then.

He asked a girl if they would be thatching the house that autumn; but she answered that the thatch would last out the old people, and she was going to join her sister in America.

"She's right—they're all there now. Why should anyone stop here?" the old man said.

The mare tripped, and he took this to be a sign that he should turn back. But he did not go back. Very soon the town began, in broken pavements and dirty cottages; going up the hill there were some slated roofs, but there was no building of any importance except the church.

At the end of the main street, where the trees began again, the convent stood in the middle of a large garden, and Pat Phelan remembered he had heard that the nuns were doing well with their dairy and their laundry.

He knocked, and a lay-sister peeped through the grating, and then she opened the door a little way, and at first he thought he would have to go back without seeing either Catherine or the Reverend Mother. For he had got no further than "Sister Catherine," when the lay-sister cut him short with the news that Sister Catherine was in retreat, and could see no one. The Reverend Mother was busy.

"But," said Pat, "you're not going to let Catherine take vows without hearing me."

"If it is about Sister Catherine's vows—"

"Yes, it is about them I've come, and I must see the Reverend Mother."

The lay-sister said Sister Catherine was going to be clothed at the end of the week.

"Well, that is just the reason I've come here."

On that the lay-sister led him into the parlour, and went in search of the Reverend Mother.

The floor was so thickly bees-waxed that the rug slipped under his feet, and, afraid lest he might fall down, he stood quite still, impressed by the pious pictures on the walls, and by the large books upon the table, and by the poor-box, and by the pious inscriptions. He began to think how much easier was this pious life than the life of the world—the rearing of children, the failure of crops, and the loneliness. Here life slips away without one perceiving it, and it seemed a pity to bring her back to trouble. He stood holding his hat in his old hands, and the time seemed very long. At last the door opened, and a tall woman with sharp, inquisitive eyes came in.

"You have come to speak to me about Sister Catherine?"

"Yes, my lady."

"And what have you got to tell me about her?"

"Well, my son thought and I thought last night—we were all thinking we had better tell you—last night was the night that my son came back."

At the word Maynooth a change of expression came into her face, but when he told that Peter no longer wished to be a priest her manner began to grow hostile again, and she got up from her chair and said:—

"But really, Mr. Phelan, I have got a great deal of business to attend to."

"But, my lady, you see that Catherine wanted to marry my son Peter, and it is because he went to Maynooth that she came here. I don't think she'd want to be a nun if she knew that he didn't want to be a priest."

"I cannot agree with you, Mr. Phelan, in that. I have seen a great deal of Sister Catherine—she has been with us now for nearly a year—and if she ever entertained the wishes you speak of, I feel sure she has forgotten them. Her mind is now set on higher things."

"Of course you may be right, my lady, very likely. It isn't for me to argue with you about such things; but you see I have come a long way, and if I could see Catherine herself—"

"That is impossible. Catherine is in retreat."

"So the lay-sister told me; but I thought—"

"Sister Catherine is going to be clothed next Saturday, and I can assure you, Mr. Phelan, that the wishes you tell me of are forgotten. I know her very well. I can answer for Sister Catherine."

The rug slipped under the peasant's feet and his eyes wandered round the room; and the Reverend Mother told him how busy she was, she really could not talk to him any more that day.

"You see, it all rests with Sister Catherine herself."

"That's just it," said the old man; "that's just it, my lady. My son Peter, who has come from Maynooth, told us last night that Catherine should know everything that has happened, so that she may not be sorry afterwards, otherwise I wouldn't have come here, my lady. I wouldn't have come to trouble you."

"I am sorry, Mr. Phelan, that your son Peter has left Maynooth. It is sad indeed when one finds that one has not a vocation. But that happens sometimes. I don't think that it will be Catherine's case. And now, Mr. Phelan, I must ask you to excuse me," and the Reverend Mother persuaded the unwilling peasant into the passage, and he followed the lay-sister down the passage to the gate and got into his cart again.

"No wonder," he thought, "they don't want to let Catherine out, now that they have got that great farm, and not one among them, I'll be bound, who can manage it except Catherine."

At the very same moment the same thoughts passed through the Reverend Mother's mind. She had not left the parlour yet, and stood thinking how she should manage if Catherine were to leave them. "Why," she asked, "should he choose to leave Maynooth at such a time? It is indeed unfortunate. There is nothing," she reflected, "that gives a woman so much strength as to receive the veil. She always feels stronger after her clothing. She feels that the world is behind her."

The Reverend Mother reflected that perhaps it would be better for Catherine's sake and for Peter's sake—indeed, for everyone's sake—if she were not to tell Catherine of Pat Phelan's visit until after the clothing. She might tell Catherine three months hence. The disadvantage of this would be that Catherine might hear that Peter had left Maynooth. In a country place news of this kind cannot be kept out of a convent. And if Catherine were going to leave, it were better that she should leave them now than leave them six months hence, after her clothing.

"There are many ways of looking at it," the Reverend Mother reflected. "If I don't tell her, she may never hear it. I might tell her later when she has taught one of the nuns how to manage the farm." She took two steps towards the door and stopped to think again, and she was thinking when a knock came to the door. She answered mechanically, "Come in," and Catherine wondered at the Reverend Mother's astonishment.

"I wish to speak to you, dear mother," she said timidly. But seeing the Reverend Mother's face change expression, she said, "Perhaps another time will suit you better."

The Reverend Mother stood looking at her, irresolute; and Catherine, who had never seen the Reverend Mother irresolute before, wondered what was passing in her mind.

"I know you are busy, dear mother, but what I have come to tell you won't take very long."

"Well, then, tell it to me, my child."

"It is only this, Reverend Mother. I had better tell you now, for you are expecting the Bishop, and my clothing is fixed for the end of the week, and—"

"And," said the Reverend Mother, "you feel that you are not certain of your vocation."

"That is it, dear mother. I thought I had better tell you." Reading disappointment in the nun's face, Catherine said, "I hesitated to tell you before. I had hoped that the feeling would pass away; but, dear mother, it isn't my fault; everyone has not a vocation."

Then Catherine noticed a softening in the Reverend Mother's face, and she asked Catherine to sit down by her; and Catherine told her she had come to the convent because she was crossed in love, and not as the others came, because they wished to give up their wills to God.

"Our will is the most precious thing in us, and that is why the best thing we can do is to give it up to you, for in giving it up to you, dear mother, we are giving it up to God. I know all these things, but—"

"You should have told me of this when you came here, Catherine, and then I would not have advised you to come to live with us."

"Mother, you must forgive me. My heart was broken, and I could not do otherwise. And you have said yourself that I made the dairy a success."

"If you had stayed with us, Catherine, you would have made the dairy a success; but we have got no one to take your place. However, since it is the will of God, I suppose we must try to get on as well as we can without you. And now tell me, Catherine, when it was that you changed your mind. It was only the other day you told me you wished to become a nun. You said you were most anxious for your clothing. How is it that you have changed your mind?"

Catherine's eyes brightened, and speaking like one illuminated by some inward light, she said:—

"It was the second day of my retreat, mother. I was walking in the garden where the great cross stands amid the rocks. Sister Angela and Sister Mary were with me, and I was listening to what they were saying, when suddenly my thoughts were taken away and I remembered those at home. I remembered Mr. Phelan, and James, who wanted to marry me, but whom I would not marry; and it seemed to me that I saw him leaving his father—it seemed to me that I saw him going away to America. I don't know how it was—you will not believe me, dear mother—but I saw the ship lying in the harbour, that is to take him away. And then I thought of the old man sitting at home with no one to look after him, and it was not a seeming, but a certainty, mother. It came over me suddenly that my duty was not here, but there. Of course you can't agree with me, but I cannot resist it, it was a call."

"But the Evil One, my dear child, calls us too; we must be careful not to mistake the devil's call for God's call."

"Mother, I daresay." Tears came to Catherine's eyes, she began to weep. "I can't argue with you, mother, I only know—" She could not speak for sobbing, and between her sobs she said, "I only know that I must go home."

She recovered herself very soon, and the Reverend Mother took her hand and said:—

"Well, my dear child, I shall not stand in your way."

Even the Reverend Mother could not help thinking that the man who got her would get a charming wife. Her face was rather long and white, and she had long female eyes with dark lashes, and her eyes were full of tenderness. She had spoken out of so deep a conviction that the Reverend Mother had begun to believe that her mission was perhaps to look after this hapless young man; and when she told the Reverend Mother that yesterday she had felt a conviction that Peter was not going to be a priest, the Reverend Mother felt that she must tell her of Pat Phelan's visit.

"I did not tell you at once, my dear child, because I wished to know from yourself how you felt about this matter," the nun said; and she told Catherine that she was quite right, that Peter had left Maynooth. "He hopes to marry you, Catherine."

A quiet glow came into the postulant's eyes, and she seemed engulfed in some deep joy.

"How did he know that I cared for him?" the girl said, half to herself, half to the nun.

"I suppose his father or his brother must have told him," the nun answered.

And then Catherine, fearing to show too much interest in things that the nun deemed frivolous, said, "I am sorry to leave before my work is done here. But, mother, so it has all come true; it was extraordinary what I felt that morning in the garden," she said, returning to her joy. "Mother, do you believe in visions?"

"The saints, of course, have had visions. We believe in the visions of the saints."

"But after all, mother, there are many duties besides religious duties."

"I suppose, Catherine, you feel it to be your duty to look after this young man?"

"Yes, I think that is it. I must go now, mother, and see Sister Angela, and write out for her all I know about the farm, and what she is to do, for if one is not very careful with a farm one loses a great deal of money. There is no such thing as making two ends meet. One either makes money or loses money."

And then Catherine again seemed to be engulfed in some deep joy, out of which she roused herself with difficulty.

VI

When her postulant left the room, the Reverend Mother wrote to Pat Phelan, asking him to come next morning with his cart to fetch Catherine. And next morning, when the lay-sister told Catherine that he was waiting for her, the Reverend Mother said:—

"We shall be able to manage, Catherine. You have told Sister Angela everything, and you will not forget to come to see us, I hope."

"Mr. Phelan," said the lay-sister, "told me to tell you that one of his sons is going to America to-day. Sister Catherine will have to go at once if she wishes to see him."

"I must see James. I must see him before he leaves for America. Oh," she said, turning to the Reverend Mother, "do you remember that I told you I had seen the ship? Everything has come true. You can't believe any longer that it is not a call."

Her box was in the cart, and as Pat turned the mare round he said: "I hope we won't miss James at the station. That's the reason I came for you so early. I thought you would like to see him."

"Why did you not come earlier?" she cried. "All my happiness will be spoilt if I don't see James."

The convent was already behind her, and her thoughts were now upon poor James, whose heart she had broken. She knew that Peter would never love her as well as James, but this could not be helped. Her vision in the garden consoled her, for she could no longer doubt that she was doing right in going to Peter, that her destiny was with him.

She knew the road well, she knew all the fields, every house and every gap in the walls. Sign after sign went by; at last they were within sight of the station. The signal was still up, and the train had not gone yet; at the end of the platform she saw James and Peter. She let Pat Phelan drive the cart round; she could get to them quicker by running down the steps and crossing the line. The signal went down.

"Peter," she said, "we shall have time to talk presently. I want to speak to James now."

And they walked up to the platform, leaving Peter to talk to his father.

"Paddy Maguire is outside," Pat said; "I asked him to stand at the mare's head."

"James," said Catherine, "it is very sad you are going away. We may never see you again, and there is no time to talk, and I've much to say to you."

"I am going away, Catherine, but maybe I will be coming back some day. I was going to say maybe you would be coming over after me; but the land is good land, and you'll be able to make a living out of it."

And then they spoke of Peter. James said he was too great a scholar for a farmer, and it was a pity he could not find out what he was fit for—for surely he was fit for something great after all.

And Catherine said:—

"I shall be able to make something out of Peter."

His emotion almost overcame him, and Catherine looked aside so that she should not see his tears.

"This is no time for talking of Peter," she said. "You are going away, James, but you will come back. You will find another woman better than I am in America, James. I don't know what to say to you. The train will be here in a minute. I am distracted. But one day you will be coming back, and we shall be very proud of you when you come back. I shall rebuild the house, and we shall be all happy then. Oh! here's the train. Good-bye; you have been very good to me. Oh, James! shall I ever see you again?"

Then the crowd swept them along, and James had to take his father's hand and his brother's hand. There were a great many people in the station—hundreds were going away in the same ship that James was going in. The train was followed by wailing relatives. They ran alongside of the train, waving their hands until they could no longer keep up with the train. James waved a red handkerchief until the train was out of sight. It disappeared in a cutting, and a moment after Catherine and Peter remembered they were standing side by side. They were going to be married in a few days! They started a little, hearing a step beside them. It was old Phelan.

"I think," he said, "it is time to be getting home."

CHAPTER IV

HOME SICKNESS

He told the doctor he was due in the bar-room at eight o'clock in the morning; the bar-room was in a slum in the Bowery; and he had only been able to keep himself in health by getting up at five o'clock and going for long walks in the Central Park.

"A sea voyage is what you want," said the doctor. "Why not go to Ireland for two or three months? You will come back a new man."

"I'd like to see Ireland again."

And then he began to wonder how the people at home were getting on. The doctor was right. He thanked him, and three weeks afterwards he landed in Cork.

As he sat in the railway carriage he recalled his native village—he could see it and its lake, and then the fields one by one, and the roads. He could see a large piece of rocky land—some three or four hundred acres of headland stretching out into the winding lake. Upon this headland the peasantry had been given permission to build their cabins by former owners of the Georgian house standing on the pleasant green hill. The present owners considered the village a disgrace, but the villagers paid high rents for their plots of ground, and all the manual labour that the Big House required came from the village: the gardeners, the stable helpers, the house and the kitchen maids.

He had been thirteen years in America, and when the train stopped at his station, he looked round to sec if there were any changes in it. It was just the same blue limestone station-house as it was thirteen years ago. The platform and the sheds were the same, and there were five miles of road from the station to Duncannon. The sea voyage had done him good, but five miles were too far for him to-day; the last time he had walked the road, he had walked it in an hour and a half, carrying a heavy bundle on a stick.

He was sorry he did not feel strong enough for the walk; the evening was fine, and he would meet many people coming home from the fair, some of whom he had known in his youth, and they would tell him where he could get a clean lodging. But the carman would be able to tell him that; he called the car that was waiting at the station, and soon he was answering questions about America. But Bryden wanted to hear of those who were still living in the old country, and after hearing the stories of many people he had forgotten, he heard that Mike Scully, who had been away in a situation for many years as a coachman in the King's County, had come back and built a fine house with a concrete floor. Now there was a good loft in Mike Scully's house, and Mike would be pleased to take in a lodger.

Bryden remembered that Mike had been in a situation at the Big House; he had intended to be a jockey, but had suddenly shot up into a fine tall man, and had had to become a coachman instead. Bryden tried to recall the face, but he could only remember a straight nose, and a somewhat dusky complexion. Mike was one of the heroes of his childhood, and his youth floated before him, and he caught glimpses of himself, something that was more than a phantom and less than a reality. Suddenly his reverie was broken: the carman pointed with his whip, and Bryden saw a tall, finely-built, middle-aged man coming through the gates, and the driver said:—

"There's Mike Scully."

Mike had forgotten Bryden even more completely than Bryden had forgotten him, and many aunts and uncles were mentioned before he began to understand.

"You've grown into a fine man, James," he said, looking at Bryden's great width of chest. "But you are thin in the cheeks, and you're sallow in the cheeks too."

"I haven't been very well lately—that is one of the reasons I have come back; but I want to see you all again."

Bryden paid the carman, wished him "God-speed," and he and Mike divided the luggage between them, Mike carrying the bag and Bryden the bundle, and they walked round the lake, for the townland was at the back of the demesne; and while they walked, James proposed to pay Mike ten shillings a week for his board and lodging.

He remembered the woods thick and well-forested; now they were windworn, the drains were choked, and the bridge leading across the lake inlet was falling away. Their way led between long fields where herds of cattle were grazing; the road was broken—Bryden wondered how the villagers drove their carts over it, and Mike told him that the landlord could not keep it in repair, and he would not allow it to be kept in repair out of the rates, for then it would be a public road, and he did not think there should be a public road through his property.

At the end of many fields they came to the village, and it looked a desolate place, even on this fine evening, and Bryden remarked that the county did not seem to be as much lived in as it used to be. It was at once strange and familiar to see the chickens in the kitchen; and, wishing to re-knit himself to the old habits, he begged of Mrs. Scully not to drive them out, saying he did not mind them. Mike told his wife that Bryden was born in Duncannon, and when he mentioned Bryden's name she gave him her hand, after wiping it in her apron, saying he was heartily welcome, only she was afraid he would not care to sleep in a loft.

"Why wouldn't I sleep in a loft, a dry loft! You're thinking a good deal of America over here," said he, "but I reckon it isn't all you think it. Here you work when you like and you sit down when you like; but when you have had a touch of blood-poisoning as I had, and when you have seen young people walking with a stick, you think that there is something to be said for old Ireland."

"Now won't you be taking a sup of milk? You'll be wanting a drink after travelling," said Mrs. Scully.

And when he had drunk the milk Mike asked him if he would like to go inside or if he would like to go for a walk.

"Maybe it is sitting down you would like to be."

And they went into the cabin, and started to talk about the wages a man could get in America, and the long hours of work.

And after Bryden had told Mike everything about America that he thought would interest him, he asked Mike about Ireland. But Mike did not seem to be able to tell him much that was of interest. They were all very poor—poorer, perhaps, than when he left them.

"I don't think anyone except myself has a five pound note to his name."

Bryden hoped he felt sufficiently sorry for Mike. But after all Mike's life and prospects mattered little to him. He had come back in search of health; and he felt better already; the milk had done him good, and the bacon and cabbage in the pot sent forth a savoury odour. The Scullys were very kind, they pressed him to make a good meal; a few weeks of country air and food, they said, would give him back the health he had lost in the Bowery; and when Bryden said he was longing for a smoke, Mike said there was no better sign than that. During his long illness he had never wanted to smoke, and he was a confirmed smoker.

It was comfortable to sit by the mild peat fire watching the smoke of their pipes drifting up the chimney, and all Bryden wanted was to be let alone; he did not want to hear of anyone's misfortunes, but about nine o'clock a number of villagers came in, and their appearance was depressing. Bryden remembered one or two of them—he used to know them very well when he was a boy; their talk was as depressing as their appearance, and he could feel no interest whatever in them. He was not moved when he heard that Higgins the stone-mason was dead; he was not affected when he heard that Mary Kelly, who used to go to do the laundry at the Big House, had married; he was only interested when he heard she had gone to America. No, he had not met her there, America is a big place. Then one of the peasants asked him if he remembered Patsy Carabine, who used to do the gardening at the Big House. Yes, he remembered Patsy well. Patsy was in the poor-house. He had not been able to do any work on account of his arm; his house had fallen in; he had given up his holding and gone into the poor-house. All this was very sad, and to avoid hearing any further unpleasantness, Bryden began to tell them about America. And they sat round listening to him; but all the talking was on his side; he wearied of it; and looking round the group he recognised a ragged hunchback with grey hair; twenty years ago he was a young hunchback, and, turning to him, Bryden asked him if he were doing well with his five acres.

"Ah, not much. This has been a bad season. The potatoes failed; they were watery—there is no diet in them."

These peasants were all agreed that they could make nothing out of their farms. Their regret was that they had not gone to America when they were young; and after striving to take an interest in the fact that O'Connor had lost a mare and foal worth forty pounds Bryden began to wish himself back in the slum. And when they left the house he wondered if every evening would be like the present one. Mike piled fresh sods on the fire, and he hoped it would show enough light in the loft for Bryden to undress himself by.

The cackling of some geese in the road kept him awake, and the loneliness of the country seemed to penetrate to his bones, and to freeze the marrow in them. There was a bat in the loft—a dog howled in the distance—and then he drew the clothes over his head. Never had he been so unhappy, and the sound of Mike breathing by his wife's side in the kitchen added to his nervous terror. Then he dozed a little; and lying on his back he dreamed he was awake, and the men he had seen sitting round the fireside that evening seemed to him like spectres come out of some unknown region of morass and reedy tarn. He stretched out his hands for his clothes, determined to fly from this house, but remembering the lonely road that led to the station he fell back on his pillow. The geese still cackled, but he was too tired to be kept awake any longer. He seemed to have been asleep only a few minutes when he heard Mike calling him. Mike had come half way up the ladder and was telling him that breakfast was ready. "What kind of breakfast will he give me?" Bryden asked himself as he pulled on his clothes. There were tea and hot griddle cakes for breakfast, and there were fresh eggs; there was sunlight in the kitchen and he liked to hear Mike tell of the work he was going to do in the fields. Mike rented a farm of about fifteen acres, at least ten of it was grass; he grew an acre of potatoes and some corn, and some turnips for his sheep. He had a nice bit of meadow, and he took down his scythe, and as he put the whetstone in his belt Bryden noticed a second scythe, and he asked Mike if he should go down with him and help him to finish the field.

"You haven't done any mowing this many a year; I don't think you'd be of much help. You'd better go for a walk by the lake, but you may come in the afternoon if you like and help to turn the grass over."

Bryden was afraid he would find the lake shore very lonely, but the magic of returning health is the sufficient distraction for the convalescent, and the morning passed agreeably. The weather was still and sunny. He could hear the ducks in the reeds. The hours dreamed themselves away, and it became his habit to go to the lake every morning. One morning he met the landlord, and they walked together, talking of the country, of what it had been, and the ruin it was slipping into. James Bryden told him that ill health had brought him back to Ireland; and the landlord lent him his boat, and Bryden rowed about the islands, and resting upon his oars he looked at the old castles, and remembered the pre-historic raiders that the landlord had told him about. He came across the stones to which the lake dwellers had tied their boats, and these signs of ancient Ireland were pleasing to Bryden in his present mood.

As well as the great lake there was a smaller lake in the bog where the villagers cut their turf. This lake was famous for its pike, and the landlord allowed Bryden to fish there, and one evening when he was looking for a frog with which to bait his line he met Margaret Dirken driving home the cows for the milking. Margaret was the herdsman's daughter, and she lived in a cottage near the Big House; but she came up to the village whenever there was a dance, and Bryden had found himself opposite to her in the reels. But until this evening he had had little opportunity of speaking to her, and he was glad to speak to someone, for the evening was lonely, and they stood talking together.

"You're getting your health again," she said. "You'll soon be leaving us."

"I'm in no hurry."

"You're grand people over there; I hear a man is paid four dollars a day for his work."

"And how much," said James, "has he to pay for his food and for his clothes?"

Her cheeks were bright and her teeth small, white and beautifully even; and a woman's soul looked at Bryden out of her soft Irish eyes. He was troubled and turned aside, and catching sight of a frog looking at him out of a tuft of grass he said:—

"I have been looking for a frog to put upon my pike line."

The frog jumped right and left, and nearly escaped in some bushes, but he caught it and returned with it in his hand.

"It is just the kind of frog a pike will like," he said. "Look at its great white belly and its bright yellow back."

And without more ado he pushed the wire to which the hook was fastened through the frog's fresh body, and dragging it through the mouth he passed the hooks through the hind legs and tied the line to the end of the wire.

"I think," said Margaret, "I must be looking after my cows; it's time I got them home."

"Won't you come down to the lake while I set my line?"

She thought for a moment and said:—

"No, I'll see you from here."

He went down to the reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; a mallard and two ducks got up, and they flew towards the larger lake. Margaret watched them; they flew in a line with an old castle; and they had not disappeared from view when Bryden came towards her, and he and she drove the cows home together that evening.

They had not met very often when she said, "James, you had better not come here so often calling to me."

"Don't you wish me to come?"

"Yes, I wish you to come well enough, but keeping company is not the custom of the country, and I don't want to be talked about."

"Are you afraid the priest would speak against us from the altar?"

"He has spoken against keeping company, but it is not so much what the priest says, for there is no harm in talking."

"But if you are going to be married there is no harm in walking out together."

"Well, not so much, but marriages are made differently in these parts; there is not much courting here."