ly in the
morning, he became vividly conscious of his own feebleness of will and
his falling away from great purposes. The conviction that he was called
to struggle for Ireland's welfare, to sacrifice, if necessary, his life
and happiness for Ireland, was strong in him still. He felt himself
affected profoundly by the influences which surrounded him, but he had
not ceased to believe that the idea of self-sacrificing labour was for
him a high vocation. He writhed, his limbs twisting involuntarily, when
these thoughts beset him, and often he was surprised to discover that he
was actually uttering aloud words of self-reproach.

Then he would write fiercely, brutally, catch at the excuse of some
hypocrisy or corruption, or else denounce selfishness and easy-going
patriotic sentiment, finding subject for his satire in himself. His
articles brought him letters of praise from Miss Goold. 'You have it,'
she wrote once, 'the thing we all seek for, the power of beating red-hot
thought into sword-blades. Write more like the last.' But the praise
always came late. The violent mood, the self-reproach, the bitterness,
were past. His life was wrapt round again with softer influences, and he
read his own words with shame when they reached him in print. Afterwards
for a while, if he wrote at all, it was of the peasant life, of quaint
customs, half-forgotten legends and folklore. These articles appeared
too, but brought no praise from Miss Goold. Once she reproached him when
he lapsed into gentleness for many consecutive weeks.

'You oughtn't to waste yourself. There are fifty men and women can do
the sort of thing you're doing now; we don't want you to take it up.
It's fighting men we need, not maundering sentimentalists.'

CHAPTER XVII

It was during the second year of Hyacinth's residence in Ballymoy that
the station-master at Clogher died. The poor man caught a cold one
February night while waiting for a train which had broken down three
miles outside his station. From the cold came first pneumonia, and then
the end. Now, far to the east of Clogher, on a different branch of the
railway-line, is a town with which the people of Mayo have no connection
whatever. In it is a very flourishing Masonic lodge. Almost every male
Protestant in the town and the neighbourhood belongs to it, and the
Rector of the parish is its chaplain. Among its members at that time was
an intelligent young man who occupied the position of goods clerk on