He went down and saw the
coffin to-day, half an hour after meeting his reverence.'
The rector consulted his great warming-pan of a watch. It was drawing
near eleven. He fell into a reverie, and rambled slowly up and down the
aisle, with his hands behind his back, and his dripping hat in them,
swinging nearly to the flags,--now lost in the darkness--now emerging
again, dim, nebulous, in the foggy light of the lanterns. When this
clerical portrait came near, he was looking down, with gathered brows,
upon the flags, moving his lips and nodding, as if counting them, as was
his way. The doctor was thinking all the time upon the one text:--Why
should this livid memorial of two great crimes be now disturbed, after
an obscurity of twenty-one years, as if to jog the memory of scandal,
and set the great throat of the monster baying once more at the old
midnight horror?
And as for that old house at Ballyfermot, why any one could have looked
after it as well as he. 'Still he must live somewhere, and certainly
this little town is quieter than the city, and the people, on the whole,
very kindly, and by no means curious.
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