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mere superstition. How it persists is beyond –”
    “No, listen: you don’t believe it but it’s tragically true. She’s had one from the sea for a lover and now she’s away. Wasn’t shefound asleep and he lying drowned in her arms, and the beach stones all changed and she, too, changed utterly?”
    They were walking again. “And how is it that she’s changed?” asked the teacher.
    “She’s …” Father Quinn’s voice caught on the word. “She’s beautiful.”
    “And was she not before?”
    “She’s beautiful,” insisted the priest, ignoring the question, “and she’s only speaking now in verses and songs.” Father Quinn strode angrily ahead so that O’Malley had to hurry to keep up. “And it’s the men of the island, old and young, that are stricken with the fever. Tossing, they are, on their beds at night, and then stumbling into my confession box during the day to tell me their wild thoughts. And they’ve gone all soft, no one planting or fishing, or planting and fishing without their hearts in it and having all their dreams at night taking unholy courses. And she, herself, down by the sea on that ungodly beach, singing to no one we can see, and sometimes” – the priest reddened with shame – “sometimes swimming naked.”
    “I don’t believe it!” asserted O’Malley.
    “Ah, but it’s true, I’ve seen her my –” Father Quinn broke off suddenly.
    O’Malley swallowed a smile. The shadow of a cloud pursued the two men down the road, shaded them briefly, then went on momentarily to darken the schoolmaster’s white cottage which had just come into view.
    “I’ve never seen the likes of it,” Father Quinn went on. “Everything blooming at her doorstep – and none of it planted, mind – and they say when there’s rain falling, it falls everywhere but on her mother’s cabin and she in it.”
    “And this poor, unfortunate drowned creature, who was he, then?”
    “I’ve already told you who he was. He was one of
them
. Surehe’d stolen some poor mortal’s flesh to be visiting her, but one of them it’s certain. Didn’t he bring an unholy flood of whiskey with him? That and a gathering of silver teapots so plentiful you couldn’t walk but you’d be crushing one beneath your heel.”
    O’Malley referred to the recent shipwreck and his own poem about it.
    “Ah yes,” said the priest darkly, “and who was it I wonder who caused this poor ship to founder? She has a look on her would tempt God himself.” Quinn’s face went soft. “Never mind bring one of them up from the sea.”
    So she
was
beautiful before, thought O’Malley, but he kept his own counsel.
    Entering the cottage’s gloom, the priest remembered his mission with distaste. I haven’t the cunning, he thought, of the true matchmaker. Already I’ve revealed too much. I’ve forgotten what I meant to say.
    “She’s good natured,” he began now, “and not likely to be away much longer, I’d think. Perhaps –”
    “Would you show her to me, Father?” the schoolmaster interjected.
    “Perhaps with some prayers and some holy water …”
    “I’d like to see her.”
    “Some long prayers might bring her back soon.”
    The schoolmaster squatted near the hearth, his broad back to Quinn, blowing on the ashes, hoping to find some fire to boil water for the tea.
    “Does she say the poems loud enough to hear?”
    “With some prayers she’ll not be saying them at all. Her mother says she works hard. I’ll do all I can to bring her back. If you come in a month …”
    “I’ll come with you,” Brian said, “in the morning.”
    “But she’s …”
    The schoolmaster rose, having managed to coax a flame from the remaining turf. “I’m of a mind,” he said, “to see her as she is. I’m of a mind to see her now.” He poured some water from a pail into the kettle.
    The priest walked back and forth across the flags. He hadn’t the heart to speak anymore about Mary, and his spirits were too low to