down to the lake, and if it were her spell that kept him in Garranard.
'The wretchedness of it all,' he cried, and fell to thinking that Nora's
spirit haunted the lake, and that his punishment was to be kept a
prisoner always. His imagination ran riot. Perhaps he would have to seek
her out, follow her all over the world, a sort of Wandering Jew, trying
to make atonement, and would never get any rest until this atonement was
made. And the wrong that he had done her seemed the only reality. It was
his elbow companion in the evening as he sat smoking his pipe, and every
morning he stood at the end of a sandy spit seeing nothing, hearing
nothing but her. One day he was startled by a footstep, and turned
expecting to see Nora. But it was only Christy, the boy who worked in
his garden.

'Your reverence, the postman overlooked this letter in the morning. It
was stuck at the bottom of the bag. He hopes the delay won't make any
difference.'


_From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._

'_June_ 1, 19--.

'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY,

'I am writing to ask you if you know anything about a young woman called
Nora Glynn. She tells me that she was schoolmistress in your parish and
organist in your church, and that you thought very highly of her until
one day a tale-bearer, Mrs. O'Mara by name, went to your house and told
you that your schoolmistress was going to have a baby. It appears that
at first you refused to believe her, and that you ran down to the school