of whisky to care much about carnations. But if you get the parish when
I'm gone, I'm sure you'll grow some beauties, and you'll put a bunch on
my grave sometimes, Gogarty.' The very ring of the dead man's voice
seemed to sound through the lonely room, and, sitting in Father Peter's
chair, with the light of Father Peter's lamp shining on his face and
hand, Father Oliver's thoughts flowed on. It seemed to him that he had
not understood and appreciated Father Peter's kindliness, and he
recalled his perfect good nature. 'Death reveals many things to us,' he
said; and he lifted his head to listen, for the silence in the house and
about the house reminded him of the silence of the dead, and he began to
consider what his own span of life might be. He might live as long as
Father Peter (Father Peter was fifty-five when he died); if so,
twenty-one years of existence by the lake's side awaited him, and these
years seemed to him empty like a desert--yes, and as sterile.
'Twenty-one years wondering what became of her, and every evening like
this evening--the same loneliness.'

He sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful meditation about
a certain carnation that unfortunately burst its calyx was interrupted
by a sudden thought. Whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what
had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him suddenly that 'if
Father Peter had lived a few weeks longer he would have found means of
exchanging Nora Glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable to the
requirements of the parish. If Father Peter had lived he would have done
her a grievous wrong. He wouldn't have allowed her to suffer, but he
would have done her a wrong all the same.' And it were better that a man
should meet his death than he should do a wrong to another. But he
wasn't contemplating his own death nor Nora's when this end to the
difficulty occurred to him. Our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it
is difficult to know what one does think. He surely did not think it