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Yet a third time he crossed himself. Pride: that was a sin, too. Everything was a sin, sooner or later. One could simply atone for living, and hope it was enough to open the gates of heaven.

The last hermit in Ireland lay on the floor of his tower and gave himself up to mortification of the soul—the flesh having benefited rather too thoroughly from Pegeen’s ministrations. It would be days before he could mortify it again with any conviction at all.

FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME in his thousand days of ministering to the parish at Ballynasloe, Father Timothy glowered at the doorstep of his rectory. For the thousandth time, a saucer of cream stared blandly back.

It was not for the rectory cat, whose tastes ran more toward mice and the females of his species. That much Father Timothy had deduced some while since. Not long after that, he had confronted his housekeeper with the facts of the case. Mrs. Murphy had not even troubled to look up from the potatoes she was peeling. “And why would you be thinking it was for the cat, Father?” she had inquired in her genteel voice. “It’s for Them, of course.”

“Them?” he had echoed.

“Them,” she said, nodding, as yet another perfect coil of peel dropped into the basin. She reached for the next potato, as if the conversation had concluded.

He was not ready to let it go, although it was all too clear by then what she meant. “Are you saying,” he said, “that you offer a nightly sacrifice of good cream to a pack of old and discredited gods?”

“Hardly discredited,” she said, as serene as ever, “and more than useful, Father, for the little things that ease a woman’s lot in the world. A man’s, too, for the matter of that, and a priest’s if he will. Or were you dissatisfied with the mending of your boot that is your favorite in the world, and the sole half falling off it?”

That was as much temper as she would show, in the thickening of the brogue and the shift to the speech of her countrywomen. He had judged it wise then to retire from the field, for a housekeeper in a dudgeon was a terribly uncomfortable thing, and one in a true rage could make a priest’s life a misery.

He had brooded and he had pondered and he had studied. He had watched the people of the village. He saw how every gatepost carried some bit of something odd: a bundle of herbs, a garland of flowers, or a silver coin fastened with a silver nail. He marked how the women took a certain path at certain times of the month and certain phases of the moon, a path that led to the huge old oak tree that stood in a field somewhat apart from the village. He never saw naked rites there, but bits of ribbon and garlands of flowers or greenery and sometimes a silver penny—just as on the gateposts—would appear in the branches of the tree. Or one of the women would take her wash ing to the river at odd times—moonrise or first dawn or the dark of the moon—and sing while she did it, songs in the old language that he had steadfastly forborne to learn.

Even the men were part of it. They plowed by the phases of the moon instead of by the calendar like civilized men, and the smith was known to quench his best knives in the blood of a bull calf. When black Paddy was hanged for stealing the squire’s prize cow, his corpse vanished in the night, but there was a fresh grave at the crossroad and suspicious marks nearby it, as if there had been a rite with nothing in it of Christian doctrine.

That would have been cause enough to concern himself with the welfare of his charges’ souls. But he had seen things—heard things. Flickers in the corner of the eye. Faint voices where no human creature was, and ripples of wicked laughter. Tiny fingers would pluck at his cassock when he walked down paths to this cottage or that.

At first he had told himself that it was just the wind, or a catch of brambles, or children’s voices carried oddly along a turn of the track. But he was never a man who could lie to himself, however odd or difficult the truth.