Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/286

272 thing. It is the thing called humility. I know well you are not fond of that thing. When you were considering the things best calculated to drive people to wrong-doing, it is a pity you did not reflect a little on the thing which is the best preventive of wrong-doing. Where humility is, there is the grace of God. The grace of God is far more powerful to keep a man right than all those things you have named are to send a man to the mischief. It was not that act of mine that ruined you. I do not deserve much thanks for that act. I did it because I could not help doing it. The goodness of the woman was the cause of it. I could not do such a wrong to such a woman. Bad as I am, I am not as bad as you yet. If you had put in my way a woman not so good as she, who knows but that your plot might have succeeded better. I will tell you what defeated you. Evil outstripped evil with you. One bad side of your work defeated the other bad side of it. You tried to run 'the dog's double race for the two cheeses.' 'The sand-piper cannot fish both sides of the river at once.'—If I had married her at that time how would she be now, and her children, if they existed?"

"And is not that exactly what I wanted?" said the Black Man. "You were as deeply in love with her as any man ever was in love with a woman. I have never seen two people so wrapped up in each other, so fond of each other, so filled with reverence for each other. Who would have thought it was possible for you to put her from your heart? Who would have thought that she could be parted from you and live? I confess that the thing has confounded me."