Page 439 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

of the Office. Meekin, walking on the evening of the flog-
ging past the wooden shed where the body lay, saw Troke
bearing buckets filled with dark-coloured water, and heard
a great splashing and sluicing going on inside the hut. ‘What
is the matter?’ he asked.
‘Doctor’s bin post-morticing the prisoner what was
flogged this morning, sir,’ said Troke, ‘and we’re cleanin’
up.’
Meekin sickened, and walked on. He had heard that un-
happy Kirkland possessed unknown disease of the heart,
and had unhappily died before receiving his allotted pun-
ishment. His duty was to comfort Kirkland’s soul; he had
nothing to do with Kirkland’s slovenly unhandsome body,
and so he went for a walk on the pier, that the breeze might
blow his momentary sickness away from him. On the pier
he saw North talking to Father Flaherty, the Roman Catho-
lic chaplain. Meekin had been taught to look upon a priest
as a shepherd might look upon a wolf, and passed with a
distant bow. The pair were apparently talking on the occur-
rence of the morning, for he heard Father Flaherty say, with
a shrug of his round shoulders, ‘He woas not one of moi
people, Mr. North, and the Govermint would not suffer me
to interfere with matters relating to Prhotestint prisoners.’
‘The wretched creature was a Protestant,’ thought Meekin.
‘At least then his immortal soul was not endangered by be-
lief in the damnable heresies of the Church of Rome.’ So
he passed on, giving good-humoured Denis Flaherty, the
son of the butter-merchant of Kildrum, a wide berth and
sea-room, lest he should pounce down upon him unawares,

For the Term of His Natural Life