for conjecture, but it is not a
matter of conjecture that one is doing certain good by devoting one's
self to one's daily task, getting the Government to start new relief
works, establishing schools for weaving--the people are entirely
dependent upon me, and when I am attending to their wants I know I'm
doing right. All the other is conjecture."

The priest asked for further information regarding our system of
payments, and I answered eagerly. I had begun to feel my curiosity to
be disgraceful, and it was unnecessary,--my driver would tell me
to-morrow why the playhouse had been abandoned.

I relied on him to tell me; he was one of those who had the faculty for
hearing things: he had heard that I had been up the hill with the
priest to see the playhouse; he knew all about my walk with the priest,
and was soon telling me that it was the curse of the Widow Sheridan
that had brought down the wind that had wrecked the playhouse. For it
was her daughter that the priest had chosen to play the part of Good
Deeds in the miracle play. And the story the driver told me seemed true
to the ideas of the primitive people who lived in the waste, and of the
waste itself. The girl had been led astray one evening returning from
rehearsal,--in the words of my car-driver, "She had been 'wake' going
home one evening, and when the signs of her 'weakness' began to show
upon her, her mother took the halter off the cow and tied the girl to
the wall and kept her there until the child was born. And Mrs. Sheridan
put a piece of string round its throat and buried it one night near the
playhouse. And it was three nights after that the storm rose, and the
child was seen pulling the thatch out of the roof."

"But, did she murder the child?"

"Sorra wan of me knows. She sent for the priest when she was dying, and
told him what she had done."

"But the priest would not reveal what he heard in the confession?" I
said.

"Mrs. Sheridan didn't die that night, not till the end of the week; and
the neighbours heard her talking about the child that she buried, and
then they all knew what the white thing was that had been seen by the
roadside. And the night that the priest left her he saw the white thing
standing in front of him; and if he hadn't been a priest he would have
dropped down dead. But he knew well enough that it was the unbaptised
child, and he took some water from the bog-hole and dashed it over it,
saying, "I baptise thee in the name of the