owed her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently
and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:

--Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!

The door slammed behind her.

Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on
his hands with a sob of pain.

--Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!

He sobbed loudly and bitterly.

Stephen, raising his terror-stricken face, saw that his father's eyes
were full of tears.

* * * * *

The fellows talked together in little groups.

One fellow said:

--They were caught near the Hill of Lyons.

--Who caught them?

--Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car. The same fellow
added:

--A fellow in the higher line told me.

Fleming asked:

--But why did they run away, tell us?

--I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of
the rector's room.

--Who fecked it?

--Kickham's brother. And they all went shares in it.

--But that was stealing. How could they have done that?

--A fat lot you know about it, Thunder! Wells said. I know why they
scut.

--Tell us why.

--I was told not to, Wells said.

--O, go on, Wells, all said. You might tell us. We won't let it out.

Stephen bent forward his head to hear. Wells looked round to see if
anyone was coming. Then he said secretly:

--You know the altar wine they keep in the press in the sacristy?

--Yes.

--Well, they drank that and it was found out who did it by the smell.
And that's why they ran away, if you want to know.

And the fellow who had spoken first said:

--Yes, that's what I heard too from the fellow in the higher line.

The fellows all were silent. Stephen stood among them, afraid to speak,
listening. A faint sickness of awe made him feel weak. How could they
have done that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There were dark
wooden presses there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It
was not the chapel but still you had to speak under your breath. It was
a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be
dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the Procession to the little
altar in the wood. A strange and holy place. The boy that held the
censer had swung it lifted by the middle chain to keep the coals
lighting. That was called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as the
fellow had swung it gently and had given off a weak sour smell. And
the