From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at Father Conmee.

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African mission and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night.  That book by the Belgian jesuit, le NOMBRE des ELUS, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea.  Those were millions of human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.) been brought.  But they were God’s souls, created by God.  It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.

At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor and saluted in his turn.

The Malahide road was quiet.  It pleased Father Conmee, road and name.  The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide.  Lord Talbot de Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining.  Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day.  Those were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony.

Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book old times in the barony and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged.  Who could know the truth?  Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, EIACULATIO SEMINIS inter Vas NATURALE MULIERIS, with her husband’s brother?  She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did.  Only God knew and she and he, her husband’s brother.

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for man’s race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore.  He was humane and honoured there.  He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters.  And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by Don John Conmee.

It was a charming day.

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying to him with ample underleaves.  The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind.  MOUTONNER, the French said.  A just and homely word.

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds over Rathcoffey.  His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field.  He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the boys’ lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening.  He was their rector:  his reign was mild.