“It might; but it wasn’t. I’m after spending the morning since ten o’clock making inquiries here and there, and devil the one there is in the parish sick enough to be fetching the doctor out in the middle of the night. If there was I’d have heard of it. And Father Moroney would have heard of it, but he didn’t, for I asked him this minute.” “And what did he say?” “He said very much what I’m saying myself, that the doctor’s gone. ‘And small blame to him,’ says Father Moroney, ‘with the way that old reprobate of a Jimmy O’Loughlin, who’s no better than a gombeen man, has him persecuted for the trifle of money he owes.’ It’s the truth I’m telling you.” It was not the truth, but it could scarcely be called a lie, for the essence of a lie is the desire to deceive, and Patsy Devlin invented the speech he put into the priest’s mouth without the least hope of its being believed. The best he expected was to exasperate Jimmy O’Loughlin. Even in this he failed. “If so be he’s gone,” said Jimmy, “and I wouldn’t say but he might, I’d as soon he got clear off out of this as not. I’ll lose upwards of thirty pounds by him, but I’d sooner lose it than see the doctor tormented by that bloodsucker of a fellow from Dublin that has a bill of his. I’ve a great liking for the doctor, and always had. He was an innocent poor man that wouldn’t harm a child, besides being pleasant and agreeable as e’er a one you’d meet.” Patsy Devlin felt aggrieved. He had sprung his mine on Jimmy O’Loughlin, and the wretched thing had somehow failed to explode. He had looked forward to enjoying a torrent of oaths and bitter speeches directed against the absconding debtor. He had hoped to see Jimmy writhe in impotent rage at the loss of his money. “Be damn!” he said helplessly. “And anyway,” said Jimmy O’Loughlin, “there’s the furniture of the house left, and it’ll be a queer thing if I don’t get a hold of the best of it before ever the Dublin man--Vavasour or some such they call him--hears that the doctor’s gone.” There was no more spirit left in Patsy Devlin. He did not even repeat the obviously incredible statement that the doctor had secretly carried his furniture away with him in the middle of the night. “The train’s in,” he said, changing the subject abruptly, “for I hear the cars coming down from the station. If so be now that there should be a traveller in belonging to one of them drapery firms, or Campbell’s traveller with the flour, you might give me the word so as I can get a subscription out of him for the sports. The most use those fellows are is to subscribe to one thing or another where subscriptions is needed.”