the very texture of its skin, and the line of the thumb and the forefinger.  A cat had once scratched her hand, and she had told him about it.  That was about two months before Mrs. O’Mara had come to tell him that shocking story, two months before he had gone down to his church and spoken about Nora in such a way that she had gone out of the parish.  But was he going to begin the story over again?  He picked up a book, but did not read many sentences before he was once more asking himself if she had gone down to the lake, and if it were her spell that kept him in Garranard.  ‘The wretchedness of it all,’ he cried, and fell to thinking that Nora’s spirit haunted the lake, and that his punishment was to be kept a prisoner always.  His imagination ran riot.  Perhaps he would have to seek her out, follow her all over the world, a sort of Wandering Jew, trying to make atonement, and would never get any rest until this atonement was made.  And the wrong that he had done her seemed the only reality.  It was his elbow companion in the evening as he sat smoking his pipe, and every morning he stood at the end of a sandy spit seeing nothing, hearing nothing but her.  One day he was startled by a footstep, and turned expecting to see Nora.  But it was only Christy, the boy who worked in his garden.

’Your reverence, the postman overlooked this letter in the morning.  It was stuck at the bottom of the bag.  He hopes the delay won’t make any difference.’

From Father O’Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty.

’June 1, 19—.

’Dear father Gogarty,

’I am writing to ask you if you know anything about a young woman called Nora Glynn.  She tells me that she was schoolmistress in your parish and organist in your church, and that you thought very highly of her until one day a tale-bearer, Mrs. O’Mara by name, went to your house and told you that your schoolmistress was going to have a baby.  It appears that at first you refused to believe her, and that you ran down to the school to ask Miss Glynn herself if the story you had heard about her was a true one.  She admitted it, but on her refusal to tell you who was the father of the child you lost your temper; and the following Sunday you alluded to her so plainly in your sermon about chastity that there was nothing for her but to leave the parish.

’There is no reason why I should disbelieve Miss Glynn’s story; I am an Irish priest like yourself, sir.  I have worked in London among the poor for forty years, and Miss Glynn’s story is, to my certain knowledge, not an uncommon one; it is, I am sorry to say, most probable; it is what would happen to any schoolmistress in Ireland in similar circumstances.  The ordinary course is to find out the man and to force him to marry the girl; if this fails, to drive the woman out of the parish, it being better to sacrifice one affected sheep than that the whole flock should be contaminated.