With relief and then with apprehension. He had never seen Frank at home before during the winter term, not since Frank had gone away to school ten years before. Why should he be here now, walking the furrow in his black clerical clothes? Why should that face, floating in the dusk, carry a premonition of change, of the end of the old life in Rosnagree?

Yet, Frank was smiling, and his air was jaunty, as he said, “Hullo, Tom, you didn’t expect to see me back?”

“What’s the matter? Is there something wrong?”

“Oh, no, nothing wrong.” He came closer, smiling. “I’m back for good.”

“Back here?”

“Yes, where else?”

“But what about—” About Rosnagree, which my father intended for me? What about the priesthood he had intended for you? It was then, without thinking, that Tom Conroy gave his answer, an answer to a call that had never been made. He levered the plow over the headland and flung it on its side against the ditch. “Well, then,” said he, as he rubbed his hands clean on his trousers, “I may as well give it a try myself.”

Frank understood at once. He stared, a little frightened. And no less frightened, Tom began to untackle the horses. On the way home by the river path, the horses plodding beside them in the dusk, the chains jingling, Frank laughed and said, “You’re joking, Tom.”

“I’m not. I’m going to give it a try.”

Why not? Or rather, why? He did not ask himself. He only knew, as he led the horses into the darkness of the stable and heard their hooves clomping on the concrete behind him, that there was no going back. Rightly or wrongly, he had enlisted, and now he must march.

And I’m still marching, he told himself. He turned restlessly in bed, keeping within the narrow limits of his own warmth; yes, at least I’m marching. But where to?

Chapter 13

Yes, he had stepped into Frank’s shoes; it was as simple as that. He never asked himself why he did it; at the time, it seemed the necessary thing to do.

But later on? Surely he must have wondered sometime whether he need have done it? Surely during those years at the seminary, when he walked around the track with his classmates (boys two or three years his junior, who regarded him with a mixture of sympathy and amused apprehension) – surely he must have asked himself why? But no, he could not remember having done so; he had been so maddened by their attitude, so impatient of that sedentary plod around the track, that all he had wanted was to break through the routine of the seminary to what lay within.