“Go on, Father Dan; that’s God’s own name for him,” I said, when the old priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that had burst from his lips.

“Let’s have an end of this,” said the Bishop mightily.

“Wait a bit, sir,” I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he had been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbidden to inquire into it.

“That’s how you made me a party to this wicked marriage, God and his Holy Mother pardon me!  And now that it has come to the end you might have expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold like a slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, to turn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out of communion, to make her a thing to point the finger at—­me, her spiritual father who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who bore her and giving her to Christ—­or if I won’t you’ll deprive me of my living, you’ll report me to Rome, you’ll unfrock me. . . .”

“Do it, Monsignor,” cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishop and lifting a trembling hand over his head.  “Do it, if our holy Church will permit you, and I’ll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go round the houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and a basin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay my head on my pillow and know that that poor victim of your wicked scheming is in the road.”

The throbbing and breaking of the old priest’s voice had compelled me to drop my head, and it was not until I heard the sneck of the lock of the outer door that I realised that, overcome by his emotion, he had fled from the house.

“And now I guess you can follow your friend,” said Daniel O’Neill.

“Not yet, sir,” I answered; “I have something to say first.”

“Well, well, what is it, please?” said the lawyer sharply and insolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one side of the hearth-place.

“You’ll hear soon enough, Master Curphy,” I answered.

Then, turning back to Daniel O’Neill, I told him what rumour had reached my dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and asked him to say whether there was any truth in it.

“Answer the man, Curphy,” said Daniel O’Neill, and thereupon the lawyer, with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said: 

“What is it you wish to know, sir?”

“Whether, if Mary O’Neill is unable from any cause to keep control of her child (which God forbid!), her father intends to take possession of it.”

“Why shouldn’t he?  If the mother dies, for instance, her father will be the child’s legal guardian.”

“But if by that time the father is dead too—­what then?”

“Then the control of the child will—­with the consent of the court—­devolve upon his heir and representative.”

“Meaning this lady?” I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who was now standing at the back of Daniel O’Neill’s chair.