there was a scarcely veiled sneer underlying the
remark.

"Was once a great friend of mine?" repeated the old priest quietly, but
in a tone clear enough to be audible to all in the room. "But he is
still a great friend of mine, Mrs Shaston, though I doubt if we shall
ever meet again, I'm sorry to say."

It was like flinging a bomb into that coterie of scandalmongers. The
lady stared, wrathful--then smiled sweetly. The magistrate's wife was
not an easy person to "put down."

"As a clergyman you would of course take a charitable view of things,
Father O'Driscoll," she answered, "and I'm sure it's quite nice to hear
you. But we poor every-day people--"

"See here, Mrs Shaston," broke in the old man, in his most genial tone.
"I remember in the old days in Cork springing a riddle on some of the
fellows; there was a lot of talk going on at the time, I forget what it
was all about, something political most likely. This was it: Why is
Shandon steeple like every question? D'ye think they could answer it?
They couldn't at all. The answer was `Because there are two sides to
it; a dark one and a light one.'"

The application of this was pretty obvious, and gave rise to a
constrained sort of silence. Pausing just long enough to lend effect to
this, the old man went on, in his frank, merry way. "And the best of
the joke is, that some of the fellows, although they'd been born and
raised in old Cork, didn't know that Shandon steeple had two sides at
all. I give ye my word they didn't. They thought it was all dark or
all light all round."

And then, turning to a fellow-compatriot of his, Father O'Driscoll asked
whether that particular curiosity of their native city had escaped her
notice too, and having launched forth, manoeuvred from one droll
anecdote to another, of course leading the conversation farther and
farther from the topic of Roden Musgrave; whither indeed it did not
return upon that occasion.

By accident or design, Grace Suffield and her cousin took their leave at
the same time as the old priest.

"Why do you never come out and see us, Father O'Driscoll?" said Mona, as
they gained the street. Her eyes were eloquent with thanks, with
unbounded appreciation of the tactful, yet unequivocal manner in which
he had championed the absent. "We have not the claim upon your time
which your own people have, still you might ride out and see us now and
then."

"Ah, don't be putting it that way, Miss Ridsdale.