plain to him what had
happened.

'Now, if you all talk together, I shall never understand.'

'Will you leave off pushing me?' said one.

'Wasn't it I that saw Patsy? Will your reverence listen to me?' said
Mrs. Egan. 'It was just as I was telling your reverence, if they'd be
letting me alone. Your reverence had only just turned in the chapel gate
when Mrs. Rean ran from behind the hedge, and, getting in front of me
who was going to the chapel with the baby in me arms, she said: "Now
I'll be damned if I'll have that child christened a Catholic!" and
didn't she snatch the child and run away, taking a short-cut across the
fields to the minister's.'

'Patsy Kivel has gone after her, and he'll catch up on her, surely, and
she with six ditches forninst her.'

'If he doesn't itself, maybe the minister isn't there, and then she'll
be bet.'

'All I'm hopin' is that the poor child won't come to any harm between
them; but isn't she a fearful terrible woman, and may the curse of the
Son of God be on her for stealin' away a poor child the like of that!'

'I'd cut the livers out of the likes of them.'

'Now will you mind what you're sayin', and the priest listenin' to you?'

'Your reverence, will the child be always a Protestant? Hasn't the holy
water of the Church more power in it than the water they have? Don't
they only throw it at the child?'

'Now, Mrs. Egan--'

'Ah, your reverence, you're going to say that I shouldn't have given the
child to her, and I wouldn't if I hadn't trod on a stone and fallen
against the wall, and got afeard the child might be hurt.'

'Well, well,' said Father Oliver, 'you see there's no child--'

'But you'll be waitin' a minute for the sake of the poor child, your
reverence? Patsy will be comin' back in a minute.'

On that Mrs. Egan went to the chapel door and stood there, so that she
might catch the first glimpse of him as he came across the fields. And
it was about ten minutes after, when the priest and his parishioners
were talking of other things, that Mrs. Egan began to wave her arm,
crying out that somebody should hurry.

'Will you make haste, and his reverence waitin' here this half-hour to
baptize the innocent child! He'll be here in less than a minute now,
your reverence. Will you have patience, and the poor child will be
safe?'

The child was snatched from Patsy, and so violently that the infant
began to cry, and Mrs. Egan didn't know if it was a hurt it had
received, for