. But she was going to be sent away because she was happy and wore
her soul in her face.

They had seemed unable to get away from each other, so much had they to
say. He mentioned his brother James, who was doing well in America and
would perhaps one day send them the price of a harmonium. She told him
she couldn't play on the wheezy old thing at Garranard, and at the
moment he clean forgot that the new harmonium would avail her little,
since Father Peter was going to get rid of her; he only remembered it as
he got on his bicycle, and he returned home ready to espouse her cause
against anybody.

She must write to the Archbishop, and if he wouldn't do anything she
must write to the papers. Influence must be brought to bear, and Father
Peter must be prevented from perpetrating a gross injustice. He felt
that it would be impossible for him to remain Father Peter's curate if
the schoolmistress were sent away for no fault of hers, merely because
she wore a happy face. What Father Peter would have done if he had lived
no one would ever know. He might have dismissed her; even so the
injustice would have been slight compared with what had happened to her;
and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain
into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish
leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the
memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met
her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting.
Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end
of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn Nora
Glynn out of the parish. No doubt other men had committed faults as
grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the
hands of God, to say: 'I can do nothing, I must put myself in the hands
of God; let him judge. He is all wise.' He hadn't their force of
character. He believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which
he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in
God's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her.

If it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable Mrs. O'Mara, who
was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... And with his
heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if
he could forgive that woman. God might, he couldn't. And he fell to
thinking how Mrs. O'Mara had long