He saw, as so many far-sighted priests did, the legacy of bloodshed and desolation that would follow any direct action by the Irish against the British Government.

Though the blood of the patriot beat in Father Cahill's veins, the well-being of the people who had grown up with him was near to his heart.

He was their Priest and he could not bear to think of men he had known as children being beaten and maimed by constabulary, and sent to prison afterwards, in the, apparently, vain fight for self-government.
To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the little village.
O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest regrets.

He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had taken care of the boy as well as he could.

But at the age of fifteen the youth left the village, that had so many wretched memories of hardship and struggle, and worked his way to Dublin.