He was the first person to tell her about Esther Costello.

This silence of Cloncraig was no conspiracy: they really had forgotten the girl, so horribly stricken, who had lain out of sight and mind for more than two years, whom no eye ever saw. She did not come up in any conversation, because her very name had fallen out of currency; and James Costello, the only person in the village who might have mentioned her, was now a befuddled wreck who rarely managed a coherent sentence, and had addressed none of any sort to the visitor.

Mrs Bannister was very shocked. “But what’s been done about her?” she asked, as soon as Father Haggerty gave her the facts. “Hasn’t she been hospitalized?”

“What’s that?” asked Father Haggerty, puzzled.

“Have the doctors seen her? What have they tried?”

“There was the doctor from Wexford, and another from Dublin,” explained Father Haggerty. “But they couldn’t do anything for her at all, they said. That’s nearly three years ago now.”

“What’s been happening since, then?”

“Nothing,” said Father Haggerty. He looked at Mrs Bannister almost humbly. “What could we do? It’s a poor village – there’s no money for big doctors, and hospitals, and such.”

“But it’s so appalling … You mean she just stays in the house all the time?”

“In a little shed,” said Father Haggerty. One of those strange, chiding thoughts tapped gently at his brain. He glanced once more, covertly, at Mrs Bannister, at her rings and her pearl necklace. “Would you like to see her, then?”

“I certainly would,” said Mrs Bannister. “Fix it for me, will you, Father?”

Going down the overgrown garden path, with Mrs Costello fluttering ahead of them, and James Costello regarding them owlishly from the kitchen door, Mrs Bannister was aware of a strange feeling. It was as if she were stepping consciously into the future, doing something which would involve her, irrevocably, in a new aspect of life. This crazy cavalcade – the dirty, sallow woman, the old priest, and herself – seemed to be moving into a queer country which, within a few moments, might capture her entirely and remake her mind and body … Mrs Costello, leading the way, stopped in front of a lean-to shed, and pushed open its door. A shaft of wan sunlight fell upon the floor as Mrs Bannister peered within.

“Jesus God!” said Mrs Bannister.

Esther Costello, lying on her blanket bed, was indeed a horrifying sight. She lay with her eyes open and her arms crossed – the eyes like dead pools, the arms like yellow sticks: she lay in frightful impassivity, as some mangy animal, used to freedom, which loses in captivity the wish to seem alive or to care for itself in any way. Her fair hair, cropped close, was filthy and unkempt: there were livid sores round her mouth: the pinched face above the scrawny neck was like a shrunken skull. The bed had a tumble of disgusting, threadbare blankets on it: there were bits of stale bread on the floor of the shed, gnawed bones, hen droppings. The place smelt acridly and vilely, and the girl herself was the noisome centre of it.