get an advance from
the bank.

'I can back no bill for you, Pat, but I'll give you a letter to Father
Moran telling him that you can't afford to pay more than a pound.'

Nora's letters were in the drawer of his writing-table; he unlocked it,
and put the packet into his pocket, and when he had scribbled a little
note to Father Moran, he said:

'Now take this and be off with you; I've other business to attend to
besides you;' and he called to Catherine for his towels.

'Now, is it out bathing you're going, your reverence? You won't be
swimming out to Castle Island, and forgetting that you have confessions
at seven?'

'I shall be back in time,' he answered testily, and soon after he began
to regret his irritation; for he would never see Catherine again, saying
to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily. But he
couldn't go back. Moran might call. Catherine might send Moran after
him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner,
however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out. 'And all
errands will be unwarranted to-day,' he said as he hurried along the
shore, thinking of the different paths round the rocks and through the
blackthorn-bushes.

His mind was on the big wood; there he could baffle anybody following
him, for while his pursuer would be going round one way he would be
coming back the other. But it would be lonely in the big wood; and as he
hurried down the old cart-track he thought how he might while away an
hour among the ferns in the little spare fields at the end of the
plantation, watching the sunset, for hours would have to pass before the
moon rose, and the time would pass slowly under the melancholy
hazel-thickets into which the sun had not looked for thousands of years.
A wood had always been there. The Welshmen had felled trees in it to
build rafts and boats to reach their island castles. Bears and wolves
had been slain in it; and thinking how it was still a refuge for foxes,
martens and badgers and hawks, he made his way along the shore through
the rough fields. He ran a little, and after waiting a while ran on
again. On reaching the edge of the wood, he hid himself behind a bush,
and did not dare to move, lest there might be somebody about. It was not
till he made sure there was no one that he stooped under the
blackthorns, and followed a trail, thinking the animal, probably a
badger, had its den under the old stones; and to pass the time he sought
for