With all the will and love and prayers in the world, he could not reach her mind. Nor could anyone else. Sometimes he would take her for a short walk in the village, from the cottage garden to the nearest street corner: he guided her, supported her, met stares and head-shakings with stern frowns. For a time they were a familiar sight in Cloncraig: the old black-clad priest and the stumbling, trembling child who only knew she was out of doors because of the thin sun upon her thin body. Now and again he would beckon the open-mouthed village children to come closer to them, the children whom Esther used to know, whom once she had gaily led.

“It’s young Mickey Howard,” Father Haggerty would say, forgetting that Esther could not hear. “You’ll be remembering him … Shake hands now …”

The child – whoever it was – would put out an uncertain hand, and at its touch Esther would start and turn aside; then some mother, grim-faced or scared, would detach herself from the gaping crowd and lead her child away, with both of them whispering hotly; and Father Haggerty, frowning and shaking his head, would say: “There, now,” and, with a hand under her arm, start their slow walk back again, their crippled progress, while the tears left Esther’s eyes and ran down her puzzled, working face.

The village folk lost interest before long. Soon, indeed, they scarcely bothered to raise their heads as she passed.

Then gradually the familiar sight, of the old man near the grave and the young child who was struggling to rise from it, grew less familiar. Father Haggerty would have persevered, since he was waiting for a miracle; but the outings did not seem to give Esther any pleasure, nor indeed any feeling at all; and no miracle came, despite his love, despite his prayers. Presently he himself lost heart, because he could not reach her in the least degree, and there was nothing more to be done, and he was an old man and she a half-dead child, and God seemed to have turned His back on both of them.

Before long the priest, like the doctor, stopped coming to see her. There was no way in which either of them could help.

Last of all, the parents themselves retreated. Within a year, the Costellos had moved Esther from the house and down to a small shack at the bottom of the garden, where she was out of harm’s way, and could find her path to the nearby privy herself. Sometimes she crawled there on her hands and knees, sometimes, more daring, she walked upright; but after losing her way one rainy morning and catching her head a cruel blow on an overhanging bough, she mostly crawled.

When it was sunny she would sit at the shack door, motionless: when it rained she lay inside: when it was cold she burrowed deep under her blankets, and lay there like an animal enlaired. This was a world she knew and trusted. Once, when she had diarrhoea, and had soiled herself, her mother struck her: Esther turned straightaway and crawled under the protective blankets, and lay there a full day and night.