At the back door he paused. The boy was running back the way he had come, scrambling over the wall at the foot of the garden, taking the shortcut through the churchyard. Father Conroy glanced toward the yard gate, then, hunching himself up in his coat, he hurried down the garden, making a detour to keep out of line with the crack in the gate. When he reached the shelter of the lilac tree, he scrambled over the wall. A chuckle broke from him as he dropped among the tombstones – a schoolboy’s crow of delight at having bested the master.

*

The candle was lighted at the bedside. All was in order – the woman of the house had had several false alarms already. Old Kavanagh lay breathing shallowly. His eyes faltered open, and he smiled.

“I’ve seen you a lot worse,” growled Father Conroy.

He had to stoop to hear the reply, above the murmur of the rosary from the next room: “Faith, I’m not done yet.”

“You’re not, indeed. With the help of God.”

It was a neglected sacrament, he thought, as he touched eyes and ears and nose and mouth with the oil. People took it lying down; that was how they were taught to take it, as the last round-up, a pious suspiration to help them give up the ghost, stretch out nice and easy like so many fish fillets. He had always thought it was a sacrament for the living, that every sacrament was for the living, to make them stand up and get on with it. Living was getting on with it. Once you stopped getting on with it, you were no use to God or man.

The rosary was over in the kitchen. The family was standing up, one by one. Peter dusted the knees of his trousers. They weren’t overcome; there was no crying; they knew the old fellow was doing his best and that, if his time had come, it had come.

He sat down with them for a cup of tea, casting a regretful glance at the blank face of the television set. The time passed pleasantly in talk, while Mrs. Kavanagh looked occasionally into the bedroom to keep an eye on the old man.

“I’d miss your father,” Father Conroy said to Peter. “Why in God’s name did you never learn all those songs off of him?”

“I don’t know, Father. I never seemed to have the time.”

“And what time had he, working till dark for the farmers?”