Tom Kernan lies on the floor, unconscious and bleeding from the mouth, having drunkenly fallen down a flight of stairs in a pub. No one in the pub knows who Kernan is or where his drinking companions went. One bystander, a young man in a cycling-suit, manages to force brandy down Kernan’s throat to wake him up. Then, a police constable arrives and tries to discern who Kernan is, but Kernan refuses to engage and insists that he’s fine. Suddenly, one of Kernan’s close friends, Mr. Power, joins the crowd of onlookers, and he and the young man help Kernan into a cab.
Mr. Power joins Kernan on the cab ride home, and Kernan shows him that he bit off a piece of his tongue when he fell. Kernan is a once-successful traveling salesman who has experienced personal and professional decline, while the much-younger Mr. Power is rising up in life.
Upon arriving at the Kernans’ house, Mrs. Kernan puts her husband to bed. Mr. Power explains to the angry Mrs. Kernan what happened, and that he himself wasn’t involved—but Mrs. Kernan reassures him that she knows he’s a good influence. Before leaving for the night, he assures Mrs. Kernan that he and Martin (another of Kernan’s friends) will come over soon and help Kernan change his ways. As Mrs. Kernan watches Mr. Power leave in the cab, she reflects on how dissatisfying her and her husband’s 25 years of marriage have been.
Two days after Kernan’s fall, Jack Power arrives again at the Kernans’ home, this time accompanied by two more of their friends, Martin Cunningham and Mr. M’Coy. Power has organized the friends to stage an intervention for Mr. Kernan by bringing him to a Catholic retreat where he can repent and start anew. Kernan was raised Protestant and only became a Catholic when he married Mrs. Kernan, but neither of the Kernans are particularly devout. While Kernan is skeptical about his friends’ proposition, he doesn’t outright refuse to go to the retreat.
As they wait to leave for the retreat, the four friends get into a long conversation about the history of the Catholic Church and Irish religion in particular, discussing everything from the influence of the Jesuit order, to the Protestant Orangemen, to the mottos of previous popes. Eventually, Fogarty (a grocer) arrives to deliver Kernan some whiskey, and he joins in the conversation as well. The men make many factual errors throughout this discussion. As the conversation comes to an end, Kernan seems more open to attending the retreat, and his friends remind him to bring a candle with him. Kernan, however, objects to the ritualistic use of candles in the Catholic service.
When Kernan, Power, Cunningham, M’Coy, and Fogarty arrive at the Gardiner Street Jesuit Church for the retreat, they recognize many of their acquaintances in the pews. Father Purdon, the priest, launches into a business-like sermon in which he describes religion in terms of credit accounts and calls himself their “spiritual accountant.” The story ends during the sermon as Purdon encourages the congregants to balance their accounts.
