They lifted the man’s shoulders and spread the blanket underneath and wrapped it around him. The young man went into the bedroom and came out dragging a mattress, onto which they rolled the body. Next, he blew the fire aflame and hung over it the kettle on its crane. He lifted the table upright and set on it a basin with soap and a towel.

Still kneeling by the mattress, Father Conroy watched these preparations. Himself unable to move, he was awed by the other’s efficiency. At last he nodded toward the room within. “Was she here when they came?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And the child?”

“Yes.”

He got up at last and went toward the little girl in the corner. She looked up at him, then fled screaming into the other room.

“She thinks you’re one of them, Father.”

Father Conroy looked at him in surprise, then searched in his pocket and pulled out his collar. Clumsily, he fastened it onto the stud and closed it around his neck.

“It’s not just the collar, Father.”

“What d’ye mean?”

The young man looked away.

“Come on! Tell me what you mean.” But he did not want to hear. He had a premonition which chilled him.

The young man knelt to blow the fire with a bellows. “I got a good look at them and they going in, Father.”

Father Conroy waited. His lips were so stiff that he could hardly speak through them. “Who were they?”

The young man laid down the bellows, looked up, then looked away again. “I think one of them was your brother Frank.”

*

What happened then? Father Conroy could not remember clearly; it seemed to be all confusion. There were sermons, speeches rather, from the pulpit. He had appeared once among the men in Donore, been cheered up onto a platform, looked down on a crowd from which red flags burst at a word. Yes, he had spoken against “them” – against James, against his brother Frank – against all of them, the class into which he had been born. He had been for – What had he been for? It all seemed so unclear now, what had seemed then so clear – the farmers stepping into the landlords’ shoes, the new gangers taking over, while the people still broke stones.

It was talk that could not be ignored, nor was it ignored for long. The letter from the Bishop came in due episcopal course. No explanation was given for his transfer, but he knew, everyone knew, that he was being put out of harm’s way. No place in the diocese was farther out of harm’s way than the chaplaincy to the Sisters of Charity in Castlemore.