But Pat Kearney began to talk again of how he could get an advance from the bank.

’I can back no bill for you, Pat, but I’ll give you a letter to Father Moran telling him that you can’t afford to pay more than a pound.’

Nora’s letters were in the drawer of his writing-table; he unlocked it, and put the packet into his pocket, and when he had scribbled a little note to Father Moran, he said: 

’Now take this and be off with you; I’ve other business to attend to besides you;’ and he called to Catherine for his towels.

’Now, is it out bathing you’re going, your reverence?  You won’t be swimming out to Castle Island, and forgetting that you have confessions at seven?’

‘I shall be back in time,’ he answered testily, and soon after he began to regret his irritation; for he would never see Catherine again, saying to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily.  But he couldn’t go back.  Moran might call.  Catherine might send Moran after him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner, however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out.  ’And all errands will be unwarranted to-day,’ he said as he hurried along the shore, thinking of the different paths round the rocks and through the blackthorn-bushes.

His mind was on the big wood; there he could baffle anybody following him, for while his pursuer would be going round one way he would be coming back the other.  But it would be lonely in the big wood; and as he hurried down the old cart-track he thought how he might while away an hour among the ferns in the little spare fields at the end of the plantation, watching the sunset, for hours would have to pass before the moon rose, and the time would pass slowly under the melancholy hazel-thickets into which the sun had not looked for thousands of years.  A wood had always been there.  The Welshmen had felled trees in it to build rafts and boats to reach their island castles.  Bears and wolves had been slain in it; and thinking how it was still a refuge for foxes, martens and badgers and hawks, he made his way along the shore through the rough fields.  He ran a little, and after waiting a while ran on again.  On reaching the edge of the wood, he hid himself behind a bush, and did not dare to move, lest there might be somebody about.  It was not till he made sure there was no one that he stooped under the blackthorns, and followed a trail, thinking the animal, probably a badger, had its den under the old stones; and to pass the time he sought for a den, but could find none.

A small bird, a wren, was picking among the moss; every now and then it fluttered a little way, stopped, and picked again.  ’Now what instinct guided its search for worms?’ he asked, and getting up, he followed the bird, but it escaped into a thicket.  There were only hazel-stems in the interspace he had chosen to hide himself in, but there were thickets nearly all about it, and it took some time to find a path through these.  After a time one was found, and by noticing everything he tried to pass the time away and make himself secure against being surprised.