in Tinnick, his very early religious enthusiasms,
and how he remembered himself always as a pious lad. On looking into the
years gone by, he said that he saw himself more often than not by his
bedside rapt in innocent little prayers. And afterwards at school he had
been considered a pious lad. He rambled on, telling his story almost
unconsciously, getting more thoughtful as he advanced into it, relating
carefully the absurd episode of the hermitage in which, to emulate the
piety of the old time, he chose Castle Island as a suitable spot for him
to live in.

Father O'Grady listened, seriously moved by the story; and Father Oliver
continued it, telling how Eliza, coming to see the priest in him, gave
up her room to him as soon as their cousin the Bishop was consulted. And
it was at this point of the narrative that Father O'Grady put a
question.

'Was no attempt,' he asked, 'made to marry you to some girl with a big
fortune?'

And Father Oliver told of his liking for Annie McGrath and of his
aversion for marriage, acquiescing that aversion might be too strong a
word; indifference would more truthfully represent him.

'I wasn't interested in Annie McGrath nor in any woman as far as I can
remember until this unfortunate conduct of mine awakened an interest in
Nora Glynn. And it would be strange, indeed, if it hadn't awakened an
interest in me,' he muttered to himself. Father O'Grady suppressed the
words that rose up in his mind, 'Now I'm beginning to understand.' And
Father Oliver continued, like one talking to himself: 'I'm thinking that
I was singularly free from all temptations of the sensual life,
especially those represented by womankind. I was ordained early, when I
was twenty-two, and as soon as I began to hear confessions, the things
that surprised me the most were the stories relating to those passionate
attachments that men experience for women and women for men--attachments
which sometimes are so intense that if the sufferer cannot obtain relief
by the acquiescence of the object of their affections, he, if it be he,
she, if it be she, cannot refrain from suicide. There have been cases of
men and women going mad because their love was not reciprocated, and I
used to listen to these stories wonderingly, unable to understand, bored
by the relation.'

If Father Oliver had looked up at that moment, Father O'Grady's eyes
would have told him that he had revealed himself, and that perhaps
Father O'Grady now knew mor