As if Father Mahon hadn’t spoken at all, the man went on to explain. He spoke with a sort of restrained impatience, each word slow and precise, as if it were in a foreign language. “When you’d go down now, a fair depth, you’d meet a coffin maybe, or bones, and you’d not be deep enough at all. You’d have to take up that coffin or what remained of it and put it aside. Then you would dig deeper and get the depth.”

Father Mahon looked around at the headstones and shivered slightly. “It doesn’t look...” What was the word? “...overcrowded,” he said at last.

“Well, no, Father, it wouldn’t be, for the one that’s to go into it.” He let his gaze wander nearer, panning slowly over the hills of the parish. “They’re a fair few families to go into it yet.”

Thank God, thought Father Mahon, that I’m in a reasonably civilized town, where people have some regard for the decencies. He half-turned to move away, but the fellow glanced at him, so that he felt compelled to find a suitable remark to depart upon.

“It’s strange,” he ventured, “that the next is to be buried there, right beside Father Conroy.”

“Well indeed may you find it strange.”

“It’s some relation, perhaps?”

“Oho! We can relate ourselves to anybody, Father, if we pay enough.”

Some cryptic, peasant phrase, perhaps? Father Mahon had had enough; it was time to bring the conversation to a close.

“Shall I need a key to get in?”

“No, Father, he never had a key. No one’s been in there since.”

Father Mahon looked at the house with some aversion. “It’s very exposed, isn’t it?”

“He liked it open, Father.” The eyes swung up suddenly in a raking glance. “The kind he was, Father, he’d see a pain inside of you.”

“I didn’t know him well, not very well.”

The man hitched his cap impatiently and turned back toward the grave. “If you didn’t know him, Father, there’s no use in me telling you.”

“No.” Father Mahon made another uncertain move to go. “I suppose not.”

“He had brains to burn – that was his trouble – brains to burn.”

“Yes,” said Father Mahon, grudging praise to Conroy even now. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Yes indeed, Father!” He paused as he lowered himself into the grave and looked up at Father Mahon defiantly. “There’s no man hates more to be shuttered up than him.” He plucked the shovel out of the clay and spat on his hands. “The light will be going fast, Father, and there’s a share of work to be done.”

And though Father Mahon called good-bye, he was already too absorbed in his task to reply.

*