“Oh, I don’t know. I like a good picture myself. I fancy a good Western, I must admit that. John Ford, now, I’d cross Ireland to see a John Ford. He’s my man.”

Father Conroy let his question lie wherever it was; he was too comfortable to dig for it any further.

The roll of a laden churn in the yard brought Father O’Hara to his feet. “We’ll fall asleep here,” he said, buttoning up his coat. “Come on, and we’ll go away.”

They called good night to the old man and took the road back to where they had parked the car. The wind had dropped; there were no clouds, and the stars shone brightly. The dog moved along inside the roadside ditch; they could hear her rustling in the briers and splashing through ice-laden pools. After the warmth of the house, the night stretched immensely around them. They shivered a little in the cold.

Just before they reached the car, something moved ahead, a black shape between the hedges. Footsteps sounded faintly, but the shape did not seem to be coming any nearer. They quickened their pace and then found that it was indeed coming toward them, but so slowly as hardly to be moving. They could hear, as well as the footsteps, the tapping of a stick.

The figure was small and hunched. It was an old man, head bowed almost to his chest. They bade him good night as they passed, but he made no reply. The dragging footsteps and the tapping of the stick continued behind them. Looking back, Father Conroy said sharply, “Who’s that, Phil?”

“I don’t know from Adam. An old tramp, maybe, on his way down to spend the night in the hay barn below. Deaf, the poor fellow.”

As Father Conroy looked back, the question nagged at him again but still wouldn’t form itself into words. He stood thinking, as Father O’Hara got into the car and opened his door from within. What could it be? There was the whirlwind that passed through the barley field. The bloodstained lamb on the hillside. The warm farmhouse and the slippers with red roses. And now, the old man tapping his way downhill in the dark.

Were they small, individual explosions in his mind, or was there some fuse that ran between them, from one to the other, so that they detonated into... into what? What question could it be?

“Wake up, Tom,” called Father O’Hara, and chuckled as Father Conroy started and hastily climbed in. “You’re coming, so, on Ascension Thursday?”

“Yes, I’ll come.”

That was one certainty, at least.

Chapter 12

There was suddenly a great deal to be done – things he had let slip, all kinds of affairs to be settled. Ascension Thursday loomed ahead, when he would come face to face with his peers. Everything had to be ready by then.