leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the
memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met
her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting.
Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end
of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn Nora
Glynn out of the parish. No doubt other men had committed faults as
grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the
hands of God, to say: 'I can do nothing, I must put myself in the hands
of God; let him judge. He is all wise.' He hadn't their force of
character. He believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which
he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in
God's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her.


If it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable Mrs. O'Mara, who
was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... And with his
heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if
he could forgive that woman. God might, he couldn't. And he fell to
thinking how Mrs. O'Mara had long been a curse upon the parish. Father
Peter was more than once compelled to speak about her from the altar,
and to make plain that the stories she set going were untrue. Father
Peter had warned him, but warnings are no good; he had listened to her
convinced at the time that it was wrong and foolish to listen to
scandalmongers, but unable to resist that beguiling tongue, for Mrs.
O'Mara had a beguiling tongue--fool that he was, that he had been. There
was no use going over the wretched story again; he was weary of going
over it, and he tried to put it out of his mind. But it wouldn't be put
out of his mind, and in spite of himself he began to recall the events
of the fatal day. He had been out all the morning, walking about with an
engineer who was sent down by the Board of Works to consider the