“To many it might appear that it would make things harder; but it doesn’t.  You have to be inside in order to understand it.  The Church takes you, smiling.  She gives to you generously, and then, with a smile, she breaks you; and, hating to be broken, you break, knowing that it is best for you.  She pets you, and then she whips you; and the whips sting, but they leave no mark on the soul, except a good mark, if you have learned.  But pardon me, here’s a parishioner—­” A woman, old and bent, was coming up the steps.  “Come on, Mrs. O’Leary.  How is the good man?”

The priest arose to meet the woman, whose sad face aroused in Mark a keen thrill of sympathy.

“He’s gone, Father,” she said, “gone this minute.  I thank God he had you with him this morning, and went right.  It came awful sudden.”

“God rest him.  I’m sorry—­”

“Don’t be sorry, Father,” she answered, as he opened the door to let her go into the house ahead of him.  “Sure, God was good to me, and to John and to the childer.  Sure, I had him for thirty year, and he died right.  I’m happy to do God’s will.”

She passed into the house.  The priest looked over to where Mark was standing hat in hand.

“Don’t go, Mr. Griffin, unless you really have to.  I’ll be away only a few minutes.”

Mark sat down again and thought.  The priest had said nothing about the lady of the tree, and Mark really wanted him to mention her; but Father Murray had given him something else that made him thoughtful and brought back memories.  Mark did not have long to wait, for the door opened in five minutes and the priest came out alone.

“Mrs. O’Leary came to arrange for the funeral herself—­brave, wasn’t it?” he said.  “I left her with Ann, my housekeeper, a good soul whose specialty is one in which the Irish excel—­sympathy.  Ann keeps it in stock and, though she is eternally drawing on it, the stock never diminishes.  Mrs. O’Leary’s troubles are even now growing less.”

“Sympathy and loyalty,” said Mark, “are chief virtues of the Irish I knew at home.”

“Ann has both,” said Father Murray, hunting for his pipe.  “But the latter to an embarrassing degree.  She would even run the parish if she could, to see that it was run to save me labor.  Ann has been a priest’s housekeeper for twenty-five years.  She has condoled with hundreds; she loves the poor but has no patience with shams.  We have a chronic sick man here who is her particular bete noir.  And, as for organists, she would cheerfully drown them all.  But Mrs. O’Leary is safe with Ann.”

“Poor woman!” said Mark.