There was a time when the Bishop had looked on that lane from Oylegate to Poulbwee as the only path he knew through a maze that had no center and no form and no secret — worst of all, no secret. There was nothing secret and hidden that he could ferret out and destroy and punish himself for and do penance for. There was nothing. There was only the maze. As a young man, the Bishop had not understood that when he became a missionary priest he also became an exile, and the two words, “priest” and “exile,” did not seem to him to be in accord, and he felt it was unsuitable and dangerous for a priest to know himself to be an exile. He felt his homesickness to be self-indulgence, but he was homesick all the same. He had doubts about his own worth but no doubt about the authority of his vocation. His only desire was to serve. To have faith and a chance to show it. The Bishop thanked God in deep humility for the chance that had been given to him. He had found, after leaving Oylegate, that he was not as great a scholar as they considered him to be at home. He felt himself to be a big clumsy fellow, more at home on the farm than he would ever be away from it, and yet when he put on his robes to say Mass he felt like a soldier in uniform on his way to fight for what he believed in. Even in his youth the Bishop never aspired to sainthood or martyrdom. To become, someday, a truly good and faithful servant of the One he loved — that was his highest hope.