‘And knowing you were going down to hell?’

’Yes, that night nothing would have stopped me.  But, talking of hell, I heard a good story yesterday.  Pat Carabine was telling his flock last Sunday of the tortures of the damned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause—­a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent.  “Now, boys,” he said, “if this fine weather continues, I hope you’ll be all out in the bog next Tuesday bringing home my turf."’

Father Oliver laughed, but his laughter did not satisfy Father Moran, and he told how on another occasion Father Pat had finished his sermon on hell by telling his parishioners that the devil was the landlord of hell.  ’And I leave yourself to imagine the groaning that was heard in the church that morning, for weren’t they all small tenants?  But I’m afraid my visit has upset you, Gogarty.’

‘How is that?’

‘You don’t seem to enjoy a laugh like you used to.’

’Well, I was thinking at that moment that I’ve heard you say that, even though you gave way to drink, you never had any doubts about the reality of the hell that awaited you for your sins.’

’That’s the way it is, Gogarty, one believes, but one doesn’t act up to one’s belief.  Human nature is inconsistent.  Nothing is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if I tell you that I believe I was a better priest when I was drinking than I am now that I’m sober?  I was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself.  I looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail I paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else.  That’s the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you’d be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over I used to pray as I have never prayed since.  If there was not a bit of wickedness in the world, there would be no goodness.  And as for faith, drink never does any harm to one’s faith whatsoever; there’s only one thing that takes a man’s faith from him, and that is woman.  You remember the expulsions at Maynooth, and you know what they were for.  Well, that sin is a bad one, but I don’t think it affects a man’s faith any more than drink does.  It is woman that kills the faith in men.’

’I think you’re right:  woman is the danger.  The Church dreads her.  Woman is life.’

‘I don’t quite understand you.’

Catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and Father Oliver asked Father Moran to come out into the garden.  It was now nearing its prime.  In a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and Father Oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected.  ’In a year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to briar and weed,’ he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the hedge.  The potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the middle.  Gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings.