ll do the job right enough. I'll do the retreat business and
confession, and... all that business. But... no candles! No, damn it
all, I bar the candles!"

He shook his head with farcical gravity.

"Listen to that!" said his wife.

"I bar the candles," said Mr. Kernan, conscious of having created an
effect on his audience and continuing to shake his head to and fro. "I
bar the magic-lantern business."

Everyone laughed heartily.

"There's a nice Catholic for you!" said his wife.

"No candles!" repeated Mr. Kernan obdurately. "That's off!"

The transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full;
and still at every moment gentlemen entered from the side door and,
directed by the lay-brother, walked on tiptoe along the aisles until
they found seating accommodation. The gentlemen were all well dressed
and orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell upon an assembly
of black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by tweeds,
on dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The
gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly
above their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back
and gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was suspended
before the high altar.

In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Kernan.
In the bench behind sat Mr. M'Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat
Mr. Power and Mr. Fogarty. Mr. M'Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a
place in the bench with the others, and, when the party had settled down
in the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make comic
remarks. As these had not been well received, he had desisted. Even he
was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond to
the religious stimulus. In a whisper, Mr. Cunningham drew Mr. Kernan's
attention to Mr. Harford, the moneylender, who sat some distance off,
and to Mr. Fanning, the registration agent and mayor maker of the city,
who was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly
elected councillors of the ward. To the right sat old Michael Grimes,
the owner of three pawnbroker's shops, and Dan Hogan's nephew, who was
up for the job in the Town Clerk's office. Farther in front sat
Mr. Hendrick, the chief reporter of The Freeman's Journal, and poor
O'Carroll, an old friend of Mr. Kernan's, who had been at one time a
considerable commercial figure. Gradually, as he re