"Forgot!" said the priest. "A sin has been committed, and through my fault." "They will come to your reverence to-morrow when they are feeling a little better." The priest did not answer, and Biddy said:-- "Am I to take away my money, or will your reverence keep it for the stained glass window." "The church is tumbling down, and before it is built up you want me to put up statues." "I'd like a window as well or better." "I've got other things to think of now." "Your reverence is very busy. If I had known it I would not have come disturbing you. But I'll take my money with me." "Yes, take your money," he said. "Go home quietly, and say nothing about what you have told me. I must think over what is best to be done." Biddy hurried away gathering her shawl about her, and this great strong man who had taken Pat Connex by the collar and could have thrown him out of the school-room, fell on his knees and prayed that God might forgive him the avarice and anger that had caused him to refuse to marry Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne. "Oh! my God, oh! my God," he said, "Thou knowest that it was not for myself that I wanted the money, it was to build up Thine Own House." He remembered that his uncle had warned him again and again aginst the sin of anger. He had thought lightly of his uncle's counsels, and he had not practised the virtue of humility, which, as St. Teresa said, was the surest virtue to seek in this treacherous world. "Oh, my God, give me strength to conquer anger." The servant opened the door, but seeing the priest upon his knees, she closed it quietly, and the priest prayed that if sin had been committed he might bear the punishment. And on rising from his knees he felt that his duty was to seek out the sinful couple. But how to speak to them of their sins? The sin was not their's. He was the original wrong-doer. If Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne were to die and lose their immortal souls, how could the man who had been the cause of the loss of two immortal souls, save his own, and the consequences of his refusal to marry Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne seemed to reach to the very ends of Eternity. He walked to his uncle's with great swift steps, hardly seeing his parishioners as he passed them on the road. "Is Father Stafford in?" "Yes, your reverence." "Uncle John, I have come to consult you." The priest sat huddled in his arm-chair over the fire, and Father Maguire noticed that his cassock was covered with snuff, and he noticed the fringe of reddish hair about the great bald head, and he noticed the fat inert hands. And he noticed these things more explicitly than he had ever noticed them before, and he wondered why he noticed them so explicitly, for his mind was intent on a matter of great spiritual importance. "I have come to ask you," Father Tom said, "regarding the blame attaching to a priest who refuses to marry a young man and a young woman, there being no impediment of consanguinity or other."