that it desired to confess something. I felt
my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again
I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring
voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so
moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis
and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac
of his sin.

The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house
in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under
the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children's
bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the
window, saying: Umbrellas Re-covered. No notice was visible now for
the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the doorknocker with
ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned
on the crape. I also approached and read:

July 1st, 1895 The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine's Church,
Meath Street), aged sixty-five years. R. I. P.

The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was
disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have
gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in
his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps
my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this
present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I
who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled
too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about
the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little
clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat.
It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient
priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief,
blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a week, with which
he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.

I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I
walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the
theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it
strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt
even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had
been freed from something by his death. I wondered