u will
become a Vicar of a parish. You will live in a beautiful house, with
Virginia creeper growing over it and plum-trees in the garden. You will
have a nice clean village for a parish, with old women who drop curtsies
to you, and men--such men! stupid as bullocks! I know it all. And you
will be ashamed to call yourself an Irishman. Oh, Hyacinth!'

Miss O'Dwyer's catalogue of catastrophes was curiously mixed. Perhaps
the comedy in it tended to obscure the utter degradation of the ruin
she described. But the freakish incongruity of the speech did not strike
Hyacinth. He found in it only two notes--pity that such a fate awaited
him, and contempt for the man who submitted to it.

'I cannot help myself. Will you not make an effort to understand? I am
trying to; do what is right.'

She shook her head.

'No,' he said, 'I know it is no use. You could not understand even if I
told you all I felt.'

Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. He heard her sob. Then she turned
without a word and left them. He stood watching her till she reached
the road and started on her walk to the railway-station. Then he took
Marion's two hands in his, and held them fast.

'Will _you_ understand?' he asked her.

She looked up at him. Her face was all tenderness. Love shone on
him--trusting, unquestioning, adoring love, love that would be loyal to
the uttermost; but her eyes were full of a dumb wonder.

CHAPTER XXV

One morning near the end of September the _Irish Times_ published a list
of Irish graduates ordained in England on the previous Sunday. Among
other names appeared:

'Hyacinth Conneally, B.A., T.C.D., deacon, by the Bishop of Ripon, for
the curacy of Kirby-Stowell.'

Shortly afterwards the _Croppy_ printed the following verses, signed
'M.O'D.':

'EIRE TO H. C.

'Bight across the low, flat curragh from the sea,
Drifting, driving sweeps the rain,
Where the bogborn, bent, brown rushes grow for me,
Barren grass instead of grain.

'Out across the sad, soaked curragh towards the sea,
Striding, striving go the men,
With their spades and forks and barrows toil for me
That my corn may grow again

'Ah I but safe from blast of wind and bitter sea,
You who loved me---Tusa fein--
Live and feel and work for others, not for me,
Never coming back again.

'Yes, while all across the curragh from the West
Drifts the sea-rain off the sea,