“Mr. O’Neill, your daughter doesn’t want your fortune, and as for myself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen sitting on a nest of addled eggs.  Give it to the lady at the back of your chair—­she has earned it, apparently.”

“Really,” said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from Father Dan’s onslaught.  “Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this is too outrageous—­that you should come to this lonely house at this time of night, interrupting most urgent business, not to speak of serious offices, and make injurious insinuations against the character of a respectable person—­you, sir, who had the audacity to return openly to the island with the partner of your sin, and to lodge her in the house of your own mother—­your own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kind of mother it can be who harbours her son’s sin-laden mistress, his woman, as our sick friend says. . . .”

Lord! how my hands itched!  But controlling myself again, with a mighty effort I said: 

“Monsignor, I don’t think I should advise you to say that again.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be sorry to see it soiled.”

“Violence!” cried the Bishop, rising to his feet.  “You threaten me with violence? . . .  Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr. Curphy?”

“There’s one at the corner of the road, Bishop,” I said.  “I brought him along with me.  I should have brought the High Bailiff too, if there had been time.  You would perhaps be no worse for a few witnesses to the business that seems to be going on here.”

Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit harder than I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had also risen) dropped back into their seats and looked at each other with expressions of surprise.

Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them, I said, as calmly and deliberately as I could: 

“Now listen to me.  I am leaving this island in about three weeks time, and expect to be two years—­perhaps three years—­away.  Mary O’Neill is going with me—­as my wife.  She intends to leave her child in the care of my mother, and I intend to promise her that she may set her mind at ease that it shall never under any circumstances be taken away.  You seem to have made up your minds that she is going to die.  Please God she may disappoint your expectations and come back strong and well.  But if she does not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her child has been removed from the protection in which she left it, do you know what I shall do?”

“Go to the courts, I presume,” said the lawyer.

“Oh dear, no!  I’ll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy.  I’ll go to the people who have set the courts in motion—­which means that I’ll go to you and you and you and you.  Heaven knows how many of us may be living when that day comes; but as surely as I am, if I find that the promise I made to Mary O’Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is under this woman’s control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man’s money, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us there isn’t one soul of you here present who will be alive the following morning.”