Joyce was to revise this short story in Trieste in May-June 1906. The story was thus to become much longer and more disturbing. Unlike in the 1904 version, the main characters very often do not finish their sentences. This is a sophisticated ploy to generate a sense of frustration in the reader, as the impression is that it is precisely in what is left unsaid that the solution to the mystery surrounding the enigmatic figure of the deceased Father Flynn may be hidden. All the short stories of Dubliners (published by Grant Richards in London in 1914) were written or revised in Trieste between 1904 and 1907.
