but I don't think it affects a man's faith any more than drink does. It
is woman that kills the faith in men.'

'I think you're right: woman is the danger. The Church dreads her. Woman
is life.'

'I don't quite understand you.'

Catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and Father Oliver asked
Father Moran to come out into the garden. It was now nearing its prime.
In a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and Father
Oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected. 'In a
year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to
briar and weed,' he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this
tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower
borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the
hedge. The potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the
middle. Gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were
little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large
apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings.

'You're very snug here, smoking your pipe under your apple-trees.'

'Yes, in a way; but I think I was happier where you are.'

'The past is always pleasant to look upon.'

'You think so?'

The priests walked to the end of the garden, and, leaning on the wicket,
Father Moran said:

'We've had queer weather lately--dull heavy weather. See how low the
swallows are flying. When I came up the drive, the gravel space in front
of the house was covered with them, the old birds feeding the young
ones.'

'And you were noticing these things, and believing that Providence had
sent you here to bid me good-bye.'

'Isn't it when the nerves are on a stretch that we notice little things
that don't concern us at all?'

'Yes, Moran; you are right. I've never known you as wise as you are this
evening.'

Catherine appeared in the kitchen door. She had come to tell them their
supper was ready. During the meal the conversation turned on the roofing
of the abbey and the price of timber, and when the tablecloth had been
removed the conversation swayed between the price of building materials
and the Archbishop's fear lest he should meet a violent death, as it had
been prophesied if he allowed a roof to be put upon Kilronan.

'You know I don't altogether blame him, and I don't think anyone does at
the bottom of his heart, for what has been foretold generally comes to
pass sooner or