The last half of the letter was painfully disconcerting. Two whole pages were devoted to an explanation of the writer’s wish to spend some time in the west of Ireland. Theophilus Lovaway had managed, in the middle of his professional reading, to study the literature of the Irish Renaissance. He had fallen deeply in love with the spirit of the Celtic peasantry. He described at some length what he thought that spirit was. “Tuned to the spiritual” was one of the phrases he used. “Desire-compelling, with the elusiveness of the rainbow’s end,” was another. Dr. Farelly grew despondent. If Theophilus expected life in Dunailin to be in the least like one of Mr. Yeats’ plays, he was doomed to a bitter disappointment and would probably leave the place in three weeks. But Dr. Farelly was not going to give up hope without a struggle. He put the letter in his pocket and walked across the road to Timothy Flanagan’s shop. “Flanagan,” he said, “I’ve got a man to take on my job here.” “I’m glad to hear it, doctor,” said Flanagan. “It would be a pity now if something was to interfere with you, and you wanting to be off massacring the Germans. If the half of what’s in the papers is true, its massacring or worse them fellows want.” “The trouble is,” said Dr. Farelly, “that the man I’ve got may not stay.” “Why wouldn’t he stay? Isn’t Dunailin as good a place to be in as any other? Any sensible man----” “That’s just it,” said Dr. Farelly. “I’m not at all sure that this is a sensible man. Just listen to this.” He read aloud the greater part of the letter. “Now what do you think of the man who wrote that?” he asked; “what kind of fellow would you say he was?” “I’d say,” said Flanagan, “that he’s a simple, innocent kind of man; but I wouldn’t say there was any great harm in him.” “I’m very much afraid,” said Dr. Farelly, “that he’s too simple and innocent. That’s the first thing I have against him. Look here now, Flanagan, if you or anyone else starts filling this young fellow up with whisky--it will be an easy enough thing to do, and I don’t deny that it’ll be a temptation. But if you do it you’ll have his mother or his aunt or someone over here to fetch him home again. That’s evidently the kind of man he is. And if I lose him I’m done, for I’ll never get anyone else.” “Make your mind easy about that, doctor. Devil the drop of whisky he’ll get out of my shop while he’s here, and I’ll take care no other one will let him have a bottle. If he drinks at all it’ll be the stuff he brings with him in his own portmanteau.” “Good,” said Dr. Farelly, “I’ll trust you about that. The next point is his health. You heard what he said about his heart and his lungs and his stomach.” “He might die on us,” said Flanagan, “and that’s a fact.”