y in the island of Ellan who has done that same every day
of his life, it's yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully than
in the case we're talking of at this present speaking."

"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan,"
began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him up
by crying:

"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and that's
now. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own purposes
wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in the
matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't believe in the
sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way for
him?"

"You actually mean that _I_. . . ."

"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never have
been married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance, either. When
somebody told you--somebody who is here now--that the man to whom you
were going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a
profligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned
scoundrel. . . ."

"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him," I said, when the old
priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that had
burst from his lips.

"Let's have an end of this," said the Bishop mightily.

"Wait a bit, sir," I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he had
been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbidden
to inquire into it.

"That's how you made _me_ a party to this wicked marriage, God and his
Holy Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the end you might
have expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold like
a slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, to
turn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out of
communion, to make her a thing to point the finger at--me, her spiritual
father who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who
bore her and giving her to Christ--or if I won't you'll deprive me of my
living, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . ."

"Do it, Monsignor," cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishop
and lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if our holy Church
will permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go round
the houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and a
basin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay