A group of peasants was coming along the yellow, lonely road, talking and laughing.  The bare-footed women stepped with great active strides, bearing themselves with energy.  They carried heavy baskets from the market town, but were not conscious of their weight.  The carded-wool petticoats, dyed a robust red, brought a patch of vividness to the landscape.  The white “bauneens” and soft black hats of the men afforded a contrast.  The Rector’s eyes gazed upon the group with a schooled detachment.  It was the look of a man who stood outside of their lives, who did not expect to be recognised, and who did not feel called upon to seem conscious of these peasant folk.  The eyes of the peasants were unmoved, uninterested, as they were lifted to the dark figure that stood at the rusty iron gate leading into the enclosed church grounds.  He gave them no salutation.  Their conversation voluble, noisy, dropped for a moment, half through embarrassment, half through a feeling that something alive stood by the wayside.  A vagueness in expression on both sides was the outward signal that two conservative forces had met for a moment and refused to compromise.

One young girl, whose figure and movements would have kindled the eye of an artist, looked up and appeared as if she would smile.  The Rector was conscious of her vivid face, framed in a fringe of black hair, of a mischievousness in her beauty, some careless abandon in the swing of her limbs.  But something in the level dark brows of the Rector, something that was dour, forbade her smile.  It died in a little flush of confusion.  The peasants passed and the Rector gave them time to make some headway before he resumed his walk to the Rectory.

He looked up at the range of hills, great in their extent, mighty in their rhythm, beautiful in the play of light and mist upon them.  But to the mind of the Rector they expressed something foreign, they were part of a place that was condemned and lost.  He began to think of the young girl who, in her innocence, had half-smiled at him.  Why did she not smile?  Was she afraid?  Of what was she afraid?  What evil thing had come between her and that impulse of youth?  Some consciousness—­of what?  The Rector sighed.  He had, he was afraid, knowledge of what it was.  And that knowledge set his thoughts racing over their accustomed course.  He ran over the long tradition of his grievances—­grievances that had submerged him in a life that had not even a place in this wayside countryside.  His mind worked its way down through all the stages of complaint until it arrived at the Ne Temere decree.  The lips of the Rector no longer formed half-spoken words; they became two straight, tight little thin lines across the teeth.  They would remain that way all the afternoon, held in position while he read the letters in the Irish Times.  He would give himself up to thoughts of politics, of the deeds of wicked men, of the transactions that go on within and without governments, doping his mind with the drug of class opiates until it was time to go to bed.