It seemed to him strange that he had never thought of visiting the ruined church when he lived close by at the northern end of the lake.  His time used to be entirely taken up with attending to the wants of his poor people, and the first year he spent in Garranard he had thought only of the possibility of inducing the Government to build a bridge across the strait.  That bridge was badly wanted.  All the western side of the lake was cut off from railway communication.  Tinnick was the terminus, but to get to Tinnick one had to go round the lake, either by. the northern or the southern end, and it was always a question which was the longer road—­round by Kilronan Abbey or by the Bridge of Keel.  Many people said the southern road was shorter, but the difference wasn’t more than a mile, if that, and Father Oliver preferred the northern road; for it took him by his curate’s house, and he could always stop there and give his horse a feed and a rest; and he liked to revisit the abbey in which he had said Mass for so long, and in which Mass had always been said for a thousand years, even since Cromwell had unroofed it, the celebrant sheltered by an arch, the congregation kneeling under the open sky, whether it rained or snowed.

The roofing of the abbey and the bridging of the strait were the two things that the parish was really interested in.  He tried when he was in Kilronan to obtain the Archbishop’s consent and collaboration; Moran was trying now:  he did not know that he was succeeding any better; and Father Oliver reflected a while on the peculiar temperament of their diocesan, and jumping down from the rock on which he had been sitting, he wandered along the sunny shore, thinking of the many letters he had addressed to the Board of Works on the subject of the bridge.  The Board believed, or pretended to believe, that the parish could not afford the bridge; as well might it be urged that a cripple could not afford crutches.  Without doubt a public meeting should be held; and in some little indignation Father Oliver began to think that public opinion should be roused and organized.

It was for him to do this:  he was the people’s natural leader; but for many months he had done nothing in the matter.  Why, he didn’t know himself.  Perhaps he needed a holiday; perhaps he no longer believed the Government susceptible to public opinion; perhaps he had lost faith in the people themselves!  The people were the same always; the people never change, only individuals change.

And at the end of the sandy spit, where some pines had grown and seeded, he stood looking across the silvery lake wondering if his parishioners had begun to notice the change that had come over him since Nora Glynn left the parish, and as her name came into his mind he was startled out of his reverie by the sound of voices, and turning from the lake, he saw two wood-gatherers coming down a little path through the juniper-bushes.  He often hid himself in the woods when he saw somebody