“It’s not my place,” raged Father Conroy. “I don’t see why I should be dragged into it. Why don’t you let them fight it out between themselves?”

The Sergeant said nothing. He had always found silence a powerful argument, even against the badgering of superior officers. Now, he watched it effectively answer Father Conroy’s question. Father Conroy had to go, otherwise there would never again be any peace; the parish would be split in two while the case was hammered slowly all the way up to the Supreme Court.

When they reached the O’Flynns’, the Sergeant waited discreetly outside in the yard while Father Conroy went in. The two O’Flynns were sitting in the middle of the kitchen, side by side, looking as if they had been interrupted in some private proceedings, a rehearsal of the court case, perhaps – she the prosecuting counsel, he the counsel for the defense. Between them sat the ram, its head on one side, an expression on its face which made Father Conroy say, after half an hour of fruitless argument, “I wonder, ma’am, would you mind putting that animal outside?”

“Dodo? He’s not doing any harm.”

Father Conroy looked at the ram. He was sure he would get nowhere while it sat there and stared back at him with, yes, the expression of a hanging judge.

“I’d sooner you put that animal out, ma’am,” he said firmly.

“Put it out,” said the husband, “when the priest tells you.”

After a moment’s defiance, she rose and led the reluctant Dodo outside. “Now,” said Father Conroy, as she returned in a fury, “we can talk some sense.” And indeed they did, for Mrs. O’Flynn was too furious to put up any coherent argument. As soon as the husband weakened, Father Conroy got up and went to the door.

“Come in, Sergeant,” he called. “They’re ready to talk business.”

He left them to it. As he waited in the yard, listening to the Sergeant’s soothing voice within, he filled his pipe with tobacco extorted from the Sergeant and stared at the sullen face of the ram. “Beat you, you bugger,” he told it, as he lit up with a flourish. And while the ram stared back at him unwinkingly, he blew his smoke over the land to which he had restored once more the peace of Caesar.

It gave him satisfaction, of course, the role of guardian of the peace; it made him feel, as they drove down the hill, that Kilbride had need of him, as it had of the Sergeant sitting sedately by his side. Together they patrolled their plantation, like foresters in a dry summer, beating out the small fires that sprang here and there out of the heather.