‘When I was a young man--and it’s hard for you to think it, but I was a fine young man; never a better lad at the hurling than I was, me that’s a doddering old soggarth now--when I was a boy, as I’m telling you, there was a deal of going to and fro in the country and meetings at night, and drillings too, and plenty of talk of a rising--no less. Little good came of it that ever I saw, but I’m not blaming the men that was in it. They were good men, Hyacinth Conneally--men that would have given the souls out of their bodies for the sake of Ireland. They would, sure, for they loved Ireland well. But I had my own share in the doings. Of course, it was before ever there was a word of my being a priest. That came after. Thanks be to God for His mercies’--the old man crossed himself reverently--‘He kept me from harm and the sin that might have been laid on me. But in those days there were great thoughts in me, just as there are in you to-day. Faith! I’m of opinion that my thoughts were greater than yours, for I was all for fighting here in Ireland, for the Poor Old Woman herself, and it’s out to some foreign war you’d be going to fight for people that’s not friends of yours by so much as one heart’s drop. Still, the feeling in you is the same as the feeling that was in me, not a doubt of it. But, indeed, so far as I’m concerned, it’s over and gone. I haven’t spoken to a mortal soul about such things these thirty years, and I wouldn’t be doing it now only just to show you that I’m the last man in Ireland that would laugh at you for what you’ve told me.’ ‘I’m glad I told you what’s in my heart,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I’d like to think I had your blessing with me when I go.’ ‘Well, you won’t get it,’ said Father Moran, ‘so I tell you straight. I’ll give you no blessing when you’re going away out of the country, just when there’s need of every man in it. I tell you this--and you’ll remember that I know what I’m talking about--it’s not men that ’ll fight who will help Ireland to-day, but men that will work.’ ‘Work!’ said Hyacinth--‘work! What work is there for a man like me to do in Ireland?’ ‘Don’t I offer you the chance of buying Thady Durkan’s boat? Isn’t there work enough for any man in her?’ ‘But that’s not the sort of work I ought to be doing. What good would it be to anyone but myself? What good would it be to Ireland if I caught boatloads of mackerel?’ ‘Don’t be making light of the mackerel, now. He’s a good fish if you get him fresh, and split him down and fry him with a lump of butter in the pan. There’s worse fish than the mackerel, as you’ll discover if you go to South Africa, and find yourself living on a bit of some ancient tough beast of an ostrich, or whatever it may happen to be that they eat out there.’ In his exalted mood Hyacinth felt insulted at the praise of the mackerel and the laughter in the priest’s eyes when he suggested a dinner off ostrich. He held out his hand, and said good-bye.