uction of Christianity into the island. His essays, published in
the _Croppy_, dwelt with passionate regret on the departed glories
of Tara. He held strong views about the historical reality of the
Tuath-de-Danaan, and got irritated at the most casual mention of Dr.
Petrie's theory of the round towers. He had proved that King Arthur
was an Irishman, with whose reputation Malory and Tennyson had taken
unwarrantable liberties. The name of Dante brought a smile of contempt
to his lips, for he knew that the 'Purgatorio' was stolen shamelessly
from the works of a monk of Cong. He nourished a secret passion for
Finola. He never ventured to declare it, but his imagination endowed
every heroine, from Queen Maev down to the foster daughter of the
Leinster farmer who married King Cormac, with Miss Goold's figure, eyes
and hair. It was perhaps the burning of this passion which rendered him
so cadaverous that his clothes--in other respects also they looked as
if they had been bought in far-off happier days--hung round him like the
covering of a broken-ribbed umbrella.

The fourth person present was Timothy Halloran, who hovered about Mary
O'Dwyer's tea-table. He was what the country people call a 'spoilt
priest.' Destined by simple and pious parents to take Holy Orders, he
got as far as the inside of Maynooth College. While there he had kicked
a fellow-student down the whole length of a long corridor for telling
tales to the authorities. A committee of ecclesiastics considered the
case, and having come to the conclusion that he lacked vocation for
the priesthood, sent him home. Timothy was accustomed to say that his
violence might have been passed over, but that his failure to appreciate
the devotion to duty which inspired the tale-bearer marked him
decisively as unfit for ordination. He never regretted his expulsion,
although he complained bitterly that he had been nearly choked before
they cast him out. He meant, it is to be supposed, that the effort to
instil a proper reverence for dogma had almost destroyed his capacity
for thought, not that the fingers of the reverend professors had
actually closed around his windpipe. His subsequent experiences had
included a period of teaching in an English Board School, a brief, but
not wholly unsatisfactory, career as a political organizer in New
York, and a return to Ireland, where he earned a precarious living as a
journalist.

All four greeted Hyacinth warmly as he entered the room.