rly in the season. He was
interested in other things; and during his curacy at Kilronan he rarely
went to Tinnick, and when he did, he took the other road, so that he
might see Father Peter.

He was practically certain that the last time he saw the garden in bloom
was just before he went to Maynooth. However this might be, it was
certain he would never see it in bloom again. Mary had left the cottage
a ruin, and it was sad to think of the clean thick thatch and the
whitewashed walls covered with creeper and China roses, for now the
thatch was black and mouldy; and of all the flowers only a few stocks
survived; the rose-trees were gone--the rabbits had eaten them. Weeds
overtopped the currant and gooseberry bushes; here and there was a trace
of box edging. 'But soon,' he said, 'all traces will be gone, the roof
will fall in, and the garden will become part of the waste.' His eyes
roved over the country into which he was going--almost a waste; a meagre
black soil, with here and there a thorn-bush and a peasant's cabin.
Father Oliver knew every potato field and every wood, and he waited for
the elms that lined the roadway a mile ahead of him, a long, pleasant
avenue that he knew well, showing above the high wall that encircled a
nobleman's domain. Somewhere in the middle of that park was a great
white house with pillars, and the story he had heard from his mother,
and that roused his childish imaginations, was that Lord Carra was hated
by the town of Tinnick, for he cared nothing for Ireland and was said to
be a man of loose living, in love with his friend's wife, who came to
Tinnick for visits, sometimes with, sometimes without, her husband. It
may have been his Lordship's absenteeism, as well as the scandal the
lady gave, that had prompted a priest to speak against Lord Carra from
the altar, if not directly, indirectly. 'Both are among the gone,'
Father Oliver said to himself. 'No one speaks of them now; myself hasn't
given them a thought this many a year--' His memories broke off
suddenly, for a tree had fallen, carrying a large portion of the wall
with it, but without revealing the house, only a wooded prospect through
which a river glided. 'The Lord's mistress must have walked many a time
by the banks of that river,' he said. But why was he thinking of her
again? Was it the ugly cottage that put thoughts of her into his mind?
for she had done nothing to alleviate the lives of the poor, who lived
without cleanliness an