The knocking ended with a furious rat-tat-tat, and the footsteps shuffled quickly down the steps. That was James’s shuffle, right enough; he was safe for another while. Then, in panic, he thought of the yard gate. He had shut it, all right, but had he locked it? If James pushed it open, he would see the car in the yard and know that the badger was holed up within.

Father Conroy slid back the bolt on the kitchen door, half-ran, half-tiptoed across the yard, and reached the gate as footsteps scrunched the gravel on the far side. Fumbling, he slipped the bolt across, then leaned against the gate in relief, as the latch lifted and rattled unavailingly up and down. That fixed ye! he thought, as he peered through a crack at a rim of black homburg turning below him. He noticed another crack in the door, lower down, just about the level of the hat, and realized that James’s eye would, in a moment, be at it, peering in. Immediately he dropped to knee height, a painful stance, which, however, he held resolutely while he watched the lower crack for the white of an eye. This is how we’ve always been, he told himself, James and I, trying to catch each other out, but careful always to look through different cracks. Church and State, he chortled. Christ, I must remember to tell that to O’Hara. There was silence at the far side of the gate. James was still there, listening carefully; Father Conroy could hear the sound of breathing, becoming gradually more stertorous. Was James, too, doubled up, watching the crack for his eye? Damn it, he was getting cramp; he would have to move. Slowly, still painfully crouched to knee height, he edged away from the gate and along the wall of the yard. Only when he was out of James’s line of vision did he straighten up with a groan of relief. And then he saw that young Gabriel, his Mass-server, had been watching him all the time from the garden path.

They stared at each other in silence. Father Conroy was the first to recover himself. He beckoned angrily. God Almighty, he muttered, have I no privacy?

The boy came forward warily. He gave a squeak as Father Conroy caught him by the shoulder and pushed him headlong into the kitchen. “Now! What ails ye now?”

“Granda!” was all the boy could get out, in his fright.

“Oh no,” he groaned, “not again?”

“Yes, Father. He’s took bad.”

He would! thought Father Conroy, as he went raging up to his oratory to get the sacred oils. Trust oul’ Kavanagh! He could imagine James’s triumph when he appeared, flushed out of his den. Well, a sick call was a sick call. He would just have to own up, let James have his gloat.