CHAPTER VII. ‘Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed that there must also be evil.’ It is three o’clock as Susan, with Jacky in tow, leaves the Rectory gate and goes up the village towards the broad road beyond that mounts steepwards to Crosby Park. Curraghcloyne possesses but one street, and a very small one, too; but as a set-off to that it teems with interest. This morning a pig-fair was held in the ‘fair-field,’ a square mass of beaten earth, anything but ‘fair,’ and as unlike a field as possible; and now that the ‘payers of the rint’ have been mercifully removed, bought, or sold, the unsightly patch is covered by young colts, that are being ridden up and down by their owners, with a view to showing them off; whilst in the far part of the field, over there, cows, sheep, and donkeys are changing owners. Here, in the main street, much lively conversation is going on. On the right, Salter, the hardware man—a virulent Methodist, who calls himself a Protestant—is retailing to a hushed and delighted group the very latest ritualistic news of the curate just lately imported, and who, if a most estimable man, is undoubtedly abominably ugly. Short and stout and ill-made, poor Mr. Haldane has not proved a success amongst the Protestants of the parish. His views are extreme, and so are his looks, and, as Betty most unkindly put it, he should, on his ordination, have been at once despatched by the Bishop of the diocese as a missionary to the Cannibal Islands, with a view to getting rid of him as quickly as possible. He is a sore trial to Mr. Barry, the Rector of the parish, and Susan’s father. But he had to replace the last curate in a hurry, that young man having resigned his charge at a moment’s notice, because the Rector would not give his sanction to having matins at six a.m., he said; but in reality because Susan had, the evening before, rejected him with a haste that deprived him of all hope.