afeard that Catherine will be too late to get the
Sacrament. But she is a good woman, sorra better, and maybe don't need
the oil,' which indeed proved to be a fact, for when they reached the
cabin they found the doctor there before them, who rising from his chair
by the bedside, said, 'The woman is out of danger, if she ever was in
any.' 'All the same,' cried the peasant, 'Catherine wouldn't refuse the
Sacrament.' 'But if she be in no danger, of what use would the Sacrament
be to her?' the doctor asked; the peasant answering, 'Faith, you must
have been a Protestant before you were a Catholic to be talking like
that,' and Father Oliver hesitated, and left the cabin sorrowed by the
unseemliness of the wrangle. He was not, however, many yards down the
road when the dispute regarding the efficacy of the Sacrament
administered out of due time was wiped out by a memory of something Nora
had told him of herself: she had announced to the monitresses, who were
discussing their ambitions, that hers was to be the secretary of a man
of letters. 'So it would seem that she had an instinct of her destiny
from the beginning, just as I had of mine. But had I? Her path took an
odd turn round by Garranard. But she has reached her goal, or nearly.
The end may be marriage--with whom? Poole most likely. Be that as it
may, she will pass on to middle age; we shall grow older and seas and
continents will divide our graves. Why did she come to Garranard?'

_From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._

'_September_ 10, 19--.

'DEAR MISS GLYNN,

'I received your letter this morning, written from Antwerp, and it has
set me thinking that Mr. Poole's interests in scholarship must have
procured for him many acquaintances among Dutch scholars, men with whom
he has been in correspondence. You will meet them and hear them pour
their vast erudition across dinner-tables. Rubens' great picture, "The
Descent from the Cross," is in Antwerp; you will go to see it, and in
Munich Mr. Poole will treat you to the works of Wagner and Mozart. You
are very happy; everything has gone well with you, and it would ill
befit me, who brought so much unhappiness upon you, to complain that you
are too happy, too much intent on the things of this world. Yet, if you
will allow me to speak candidly, I will tell you what I really think.
You are changing; the woman I once knew hardly corresponds with the
woman who writes to me. In reading the letters of the English Nora