Thus they lived through the months of January and February, 1881, at Morony Castle, and Florian had not as yet told his secret. As a boy his nature had seemed to be entirely altered during the last six months. He was thoughtful, morose, and obstinate to a degree, which his father was unable to fathom. But during these last two months there had been no intercourse between them. It may almost be said that no word had been addressed by either to the other. No further kind of punishment had been inflicted. Indeed, the boy enjoyed a much wider liberty than had been given to him before, or than was good for him. For his father not only gave no orders to him, but seldom spoke concerning him. It was, however, a terrible trouble to his mind, the fact that his own son should be thus possessed of his own peculiar secret, and should continue from month to month hiding it within his own bosom. With Father Malachi Mr. Jones was on good terms, but to him he could say nothing on the subject. The absurdity of the conversion, or perversion, of the boy, in reference to his religion, made Mr. Jones unwilling to speak of him to any Roman Catholic priest. Father Malachi would no doubt have owned that the boy had been altogether unable to see, by his own light, the difference between the two religions. But he would have attributed the change to the direct interposition of God. He would not have declared in so many words that a miracle had been performed in the boy's favour, but this would have been the meaning of the argument he would have used. In fact, the gaining of a proselyte under any circumstances would have been an advantage too great to jeopardise by any arguments in the matter. The Protestant clergyman at Headford, in whose parish Morony Castle was supposed to have been situated, was a thin, bigoted Protestant, of that kind which used to be common in Ireland. Mr. Armstrong was a gentleman, who held it to be an established fact that a Roman Catholic must necessarily go to the devil. In all the moralities he was perfect. He was a married man, with a wife and six children, all of whom he brought up and educated on L250 a year. He never was in debt; he performed all his duties--such as they were--and passed his time in making rude and unavailing attempts to convert his poorer neighbours. There was a union,--or poor-house--in the neighbourhood, to which he would carry morsels of meat in his pocket on Friday, thinking that the poor wretches who had flown in the face of their priest by eating the unhallowed morsels, would then have made a first step towards Protestantism. He was charitable, with so little means for charity; he was very eager in his discourses, in the course of which he would preach to a dozen Protestants for three-quarters of an hour, and would confine himself to one subject, the iniquities of the Roman Catholic religion. He had heard of Florian's perversion, and had made it the topic on which he had declaimed for two Sundays.