’And now, when I sit here facing the death for myself, I can look out of my windows there back and see the canal, and I say to Terry again, as if I was coming face to face with him, that I did the best deed I could do for him and his.  I broke with the Cath’lic Church long ago, for I couldn’t go to confess; and many’s the year that I never thought of religion.  But now that I am going to die I try to read the books my daughter’s minister gives me, and I look to God and say that I’ve sins on my soul, but the drowning of O’Brien, as far as I know right from wrong, isn’t one of them.’

The young priest had an idea that the occasion demanded some strong form of speech.  ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘what have you told me this for?’

The strength of her excitement was subsiding.  In its wane the afflictions of her age seemed to be let loose upon her again.  Her words came more thickly, her gaunt frame trembled the more, but not for one moment did her eye flinch before his youthful severity.

’I hear that you priests are at it yet.  “Marry and marry and marry,” that’s what ye teach the poor folks that will do your bidding, “in order that the new country may be filled with Cath’lics,” and I thought before I died I’d just let ye know how one such marriage turned; and as he didn’t come himself you may go home and tell Father M’Leod that, God helping me, I have told you the truth.’

The next day an elderly priest approached the door of the same house.  His hair was grey, his shoulders bent, his face was furrowed with those benign lines which tell that the pain which has graven them is that sympathy which accepts as its own the sorrows of others.  Father M’Leod had come far because he had a word to say, a word of pity and of sympathy, which he hoped might yet touch an impenitent heart, a word that he felt was due from the Church he represented to this wandering soul, whether repentance should be the result or not.

When he rang the bell it was not the young girl but her mother who answered the door; her face, which spoke of ordinary comfort and good cheer, bore marks of recent tears.

‘Do you know,’ asked the Father curiously, ’what statement it was that your mother communicated to my friend who was here yesterday?’

‘No, sir, I do not.’

‘Your mother was yesterday in her usual health and sound mind?’ he interrogated gently.

‘She was indeed, sir,’ and she wiped a tear.

‘I would like to see your mother,’ persisted he.

’She had a stroke in the night, sir; she’s lying easy now, but she knows no one, and the doctor says she’ll never hear or see or speak again.’

The old man sighed deeply.

’If I may make so bold, sir, will you tell me what business it was my mother had with the young man yesterday or with yourself?’

‘It is not well that I should tell you,’ he replied, and he went away.

IV