Father O’Grady’s coming had been a pleasure to him, for they had talked together; he had confessed to him; had been shriven. At that moment he caught sight of a newspaper upon his table. ‘Illustrated England,’ he muttered, his thoughts half away; and he fell to wondering how it had come into the house. ‘Father O’Grady must have left it,’ he said, and began to unroll the paper. But while unrolling it he stopped. Half his mind was still away, and he sat for fully ten minutes lost in sad sensations, and it was the newspaper slipping from his hand that awoke him. The first thing that caught his eye on opening the paper was an interview with Mr. Walter Poole, embellished with many photographs of Beechwood Hall.
‘Did O’Grady leave this paper here for me to read,’ he asked himself, ‘or did he fo
