ut tell me, is the poor child really
resigned?"

"Well, indeed she is, your reverence, excep' now and then, when the
whole thing comes back to her. In fact, she's less trouble than when she
was well. Then nothing could please her. She was always grumblin' about
her clothes, an' her food; and she was short and peevish. Now she is
pleased with everythin'. 'T is 'whatever you like, mother;' or ''t is too
good for me, mother;' or 'thank you kindly, mother,' until sometimes I
do be wishing that she had some of the old sperrit, and take me short in
her answers. But, sure, 't is all God's Blessed and Holy Will. Glory be
to His Holy Name!"

I went back through the village again and called upon Father Letheby. He
was just sitting down to dinner.

"I don't want to take away your appetite," I said, refusing the chair
which he proffered; "but I am for the first time genuinely angry with
you. I suppose you had your reasons for it; but you ought to know that a
parish priest has, by every law, natural and canonical, the right to
know about his sick or distressed poor people, and that a curate has no
right to be keeping these things a secret from him. Reticence and
secretiveness are excellent things in their way; but this too may be
overdone. I have just been down to Mrs. Moylan's to learn for the first
time that her child has been sick for nearly two months. You knew it and
you never told me. Now, I'll insist for the future that a sick-call book
shall be kept in the sacristy, and that the name of every patient, in
the parish shall be entered there. Good evening."

He flushed up, but said nothing.

I passed the chapel door and went in straight up to the altar of the
Blessed Virgin.

"Now," I said, "you've carried this entirely too far. Is this the return
I've got for all I've done for you for the past fifty years? Think of
all the Rosaries I said for you, all the Masses I offered for you, all
the May devotions I established for you, all the Brown Scapulars I gave
for you--all--all--and this is your return; and she your own child, that
I thought was so like you. 'Pon my word, I think I'll blow out that lamp
and never light it again."

The mild, brown eyes looked down on me calmly, and then that queer thing
called Conscience, that jumps up like a jack-in-the-box when you least
expect it, started at me and began:--

"What folly is this, Father Dan? Do you think you know more than God and
His Blessed Mother? Do you? Your head is