‘I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.’
‘What is it but a step? Three miles—’
‘And a half.’
Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver got up from his chair.
‘Now, Moran, isn’t it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn’t think of giving up the priesthood.’
‘What are you saying, Gogarty? Don’t you know well enough I’d have been suspended? Didn’t I tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring hell were open, and I sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, I should fill myself a glass?’
‘And knowing you were going down to he
