‘Now don’t be sparin’ with the water, your reverence, and don’t be a mindin’ its noise; it’s twicest the quantity of holy water it’ll be wanting, and it half an hour a Protestant.’

It was at that moment Mrs. Rean appeared in the doorway, and Patsy Kivel, who didn’t care to enter the Protestant church, rushed to put her out of his.

’You can do what you like now with the child; it’s a Protestant, for all your tricks.’

‘Go along, you old heretic bitch!’

’Now, Patsy, will you behave yourself when you’re standing in the Church of God!  Be leaving the woman alone,’ said Father Oliver; but before he got to the door to separate the two, Mrs. Rean was running down the chapel yard followed by the crowd of disputants, and he heard the quarrel growing fainter in the village street.

Rose-coloured clouds had just begun to appear midway in the pale sky—­a beautiful sky, all gray and rose—­and all this babble about baptism seemed strangely out of his mind.  ’And to think that men are still seeking scrolls in Turkestan to prove—­’ The sentence did not finish itself in his mind; a ray of western light falling across the altar steps in the stillness of the church awakened a remembrance in him of the music that Nora’s hands drew from the harmonium, and, leaning against the Communion-rails, he allowed the music to absorb him.  He could hear it so distinctly in his mind that he refrained from going up into the gallery and playing it, for in his playing he would perceive how much he had forgotten, how imperfect was his memory.  It were better to lose himself in the emotion of the memory of the music; it was in his blood, and he could see her hands playing it, and the music was coloured with the memory of her hair and her eyes.  His teeth clenched a little as if in pain, and then he feared the enchantment would soon pass away; but the music preserved it longer than he had expected, and it might have lasted still longer if he had not become aware that someone was standing in the doorway.

The feeling suddenly came over him that he was not alone; it was borne in upon him—­he knew not how, neither by sight nor sound—­through some exceptional sense.  And turning towards the sunlit doorway, he saw a poor man standing there, not daring to disturb the priest, thinking, no doubt, that he was engaged in prayer.  The poor man was Pat Kearney.  So the priest was a little overcome, for that Pat Kearney should come to him at such a time was portentous.  ’It is strange, certainly, coincidence after coincidence,’ he said; and he stood looking at Pat as if he didn’t know him, till the poor man was frightened and began to wonder, for no one had ever looked at him with such interest, not even the neighbour whom he had asked to marry him three weeks ago.  And this Pat Kearney, who was a short, thick-set man, sinking into years, began to wonder what new misfortune had tracked him down.  His teeth were worn and yellow as Indian meal, and his rough, ill-shaven cheeks and pale eyes reminded the priest of the country in which Pat lived, and of the four acres of land at the end of the boreen that Pat was digging these many years.