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bitterness in you," said the young priest with sadness. "You remember Ireland, and the English. But here, in America, we are free." "Free-for what, Father?" The priest had looked at him earnestly, and then had winced at the sight of Joseph's face. "To live," he had murmured. Joseph had burst out into ugly laughter, then, and had left him. The priest then spoke of Joseph to the Superior of the combined convent and orphanage, Sister Elizabeth, a small portly middle-aged woman with a kind and sensible face and gentle eyes, but also with a grim mouth and a will that, Father Barton suspected, not even God could bend. She was not the conventional docile and obedient nun whom Father Barton believed had comforted his bleak childhood. She feared no one-and possibly not even God, the priest also suspected with some interior misgivings, and she had a worldly brief smile and an impatient air of tolerance when he delivered some small homily or pious aphorism to her. When he became particularly ethereal she would say quickly and with an abrupt motion of her small fat hand, "Yes, yes, Father, but that will not buy any potatoes, I am thinking." It was her famous reply to any maudlin remark or sentimental dithering on the part of anyone. Father Barton had said to her, "Joseph Armagh, Sister. I confess that he troubles me, for though he is very young he seems to have had experiences far beyond his age, and has become hard and vindictive over them, and unforgiving, and perhaps even vengeful." Sister Elizabeth considered, fixing her eyes upon the priest for several moments. Then she said, "He has his reasons, Father, with which you and I may not agree, but they are his reasons, born out of sorrow, and he must find his way alone." "He needs the help of his Church, and his God," said the priest. "Father, has it ever occurred to you that Joseph has no church, and no God?" "At so young an age?" The priest's voice trembled. "Father, he is not young, and it is possible that he never was." With that reply she had closed the conversation and had bustled away, her wooden beads clicking, and the priest had gazed after her and had wondered, wretchedly, how it was that in these days the Religious seemed more concerned over matters of the world than in their hope of heaven. Smarting a little, he remembered: "But that will not buy any potatoes." Once he had thought to say, "God will provide," but he guessed at once that Sister Elizabeth was waiting for him to make just that remark so she could pounce, and so he had refrained, flinching. Joseph was not thinking, tonight, of either Father Barton or Sister Elizabeth, for they were no more to him than anyone else. They merely existed, as others in his world existed, and he never permitted them to approach him, not because he resented or respected them-for he did neither-but because he knew they were not part of his life at all and represented nothing to him of any value except that the nun sheltered and fed his brother and sister until the day when he could take them from her. He had no more animosity towards them than he had for the rest of the world of men and women, for he knew now that personal animosity brought people more sharply towards you, made you aware of their being, and there was no time for this or any other wasteful emotion like it. There would be no intrusion into his existence by any stranger, for that weakened a man. He had no curiosity about others, no sense of fellowship with those about him, no pity, no hostility, no longing for companionship for all the loneliness that tortured him frequently. On another occasion Father Barton had said to him, knowing his history, "Joseph, there are multitudes of people in this country, and not only from Ireland, who have suffered and have lost as you suffered and lost. Yet, they do not turn away from others." Joseph had stared at him without expression. "I neither turn away nor turn to, Father. I am as I was made. The same anvil and hammer create horseshoes