"
How's Mary Malone?" he asked.
"She is quite well noo," answered Dannie, "but she is na happy. I
live so close, and see so much, I know. I've thought of ye lately.
I have thought of coming to see ye. I'm na of your religion, but
Mary is, and what suits her is guid enough for me. I've tried to
think of everything under the sun that might help, and among other
things I've thought of ye. Jimmy was confirmed in your church, and
he was more or less regular up to his marriage."
"Less, Mr. Macnoun, much less!" said the priest. "Since, not at
all. Why do you ask?"
"He is sick," said Dannie. "He drinks a guid deal. He has been
reckless about sleeping on the ground, and noo, if ye will make
this confidential?"-- the priest nodded-- "he is talking aboot
sleeping on the railroad, and he's having delusions. There are
devils after him. He is the finest fellow ye ever knew, Father
Michael. We've been friends all our lives. Ye have had much
experience with men, and it ought to count fra something. From all
ye know, and what I've told ye, could his trouble be cured as the
doctor suggests?"
The priest did a queer thing. "You know him as no living man,
Dannie," he said. "What do you think?"
Dannie's big hands slowly opened and closed. Then he fell to
polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the other. At last
he answered, "If ye'd asked me that this time last year, I'd have
said `it's the drink,' at a jump. But times this summer, this
morning, for instance, when he hadna a drop in three weeks, and
dinna want ane, when he could have Come wi' me to town, and
wouldna, and there were devils calling him from the ground, and the
trees, and the sky, out in the open cornfield, it looked bad.
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