Explore "The Wild Geese" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Father O'Hara looked at the two prisoners, and the tears ran down his face. He was the man whom Colonel Sullivan and Bale had overtaken on their way to Tralee. In spite of his life and his wrongs, he was a merciful man, and with all his heart he wished that, if he could do no good, God had been pleased to send him another way through the mist. Not that life was to him aught but a tragedy at any time, on whichever road he took. What but a tragedy could it be to a man bred at Douay and reared on Greek, and now condemned to live in loneliness and squalor among unlettered, unwashed creatures; to one who, banned by the law, moved by night, and lurked in some hiding-place by day, and, waking or sleeping, was ever in contact with the lawless and the oppressed, the wretched and the starving -- whose existence was spent in shriving, christening, burying among the hills and bogs?
Yet, even in such a life this was a tragedy beyond the common. And -- "What can I do? " he cried. "_Non mihi, domine, culpa! _ Oh, what can I do?"