The same steady, persistent downpour of rain continued as we passed over the boulders of the torrent, and made our way through slushy mud and dripping heather to where our horse was waiting. Father Letheby was slightly moody.

At last, taking off his hat, and shaking down streams of water, he said:—

"That was a shocking thing this morning. You heard me speak angrily. Imagine those people standing up coolly, immediately after having received Holy Communion; and I have spoken to them so repeatedly about reverence."

"Did you notice where they were kneeling?" I said, not unkindly.

"Well, indeed it was not velvet."

"No," I said, "but rough cobblestones, rather pointed, like some allusions in our sermons. Do you know how long they were kneeling there?"

"During Mass," he said.

"No," I replied, "they knelt there during the confessions, and during Mass. I am not excusing them, but did you ever hear of the ancient penance of wearing peas in pilgrims' shoes? Some, I believe, and I think Erasmus is the authority, had the wisdom to boil those peas. But you cannot boil cobblestones. I never realized this part of our people's sufferings till a poor fellow one morning, whilst I sat comfortably by the fire, interrupted his confession to say:—

"For the love of God, your reverence, would you lave me put my cap under my knees?"

My curate laughed good-naturedly. We got out on the highroad at last; and as we jogged home in the soft, warm rain, I took the opportunity of giving a little advice. It is a little luxury I am rather fond of, like the kindred stimulant of a pinch of snuff; and as I have had but few luxuries in my life, no one ought grudge me this.

"My dear Father Letheby," I said, as we sat comfortably together, "the great principle of Irish life is quieta non movere. Because, when you lay a finger on the most harmless and impotent things, they spring at once into hissing and spitting things, like the Lernaean hydra; and then, like that famous monster, you must cauterize the wound to heal, or prevent new hideous developments. You have, as yet, no idea of how many ways, all different and mutually antagonistic, there are, of looking at things in Ireland. To your mind there seems but one,—one judgment, and therefore one course of action. There are a hundred mirrors concentrated on the same object, and each catches its own shape and color from passion and interest. And each is quite honest in its own portraiture, and each is prepared to fight for its own view to the bitter end."

"I beg your pardon, sir," my curate said, deferentially, "I am following you with great attention. Do I understand you to say that each mirror is prepared to fight for its own view to the bitter end? I have seen something like that in a comic picture—"

"You know, you rascal, what I mean," I said, "I mean the hands that hold the mirrors."

"Of course," he said, "my stupidity. But I am a little bit of a purist in language."

Now, isn't this annoying? Poor Father Tom never interrupted me. He always used say: "Yes! yes! to be sure! to be sure!" or, "Ki bono? ki bono?" which grated horribly on my ears. I see I must be more careful; and I shall defer this lecture.

"Might I ask you to proceed, sir?" he said. "It is very interesting, indeed. You were talking about the pugnacity of mirrors."

There was a slight acidity here; but the poor fellow was put out.

"Never mind," I said, "you have a great deal to learn yet—with wrinkles and gray hairs. But if you want to keep these raven locks, now wet and dripping, intact, remember, quieta non movere! And if you want to keep your face, now smooth and ruddy, but, I regret to say, glistening with rain, free from wrinkles, remember, quieta non movere. Take now your frequent altar denunciations of local superstitions,—the eggs found in the garden, and the consequent sterility of the milk, the evil eye and the cattle dying, etc., etc.,—it will take more than altar denunciations, believe me,—it will take years of vigorous education to relegate these ideas into the limbo of exploded fantasies. And the people won't be comfortable without them. You take away the poetry, which is an essential element in the Gaelic character, and you make the people prosaic and critical, which is the worst thing possible for them. Thiggin-thu? But I beg your pardon. You are beyond all that."

"It sounds plausible," he said, getting down from the gig; "but it sounds also, pardon the expression, cowardly. However, we'll see!"



CHAPTER VII

SCRUPLES

Captain Campion gave a large dinner party on All-Hallows-Eve. It is a ghostly time; and, in Ireland, every one, even the most advanced and materialistic, feels that the air is full of strange beings, who cannot be accounted for either by the microscope or the scalpel. Father Letheby was invited and went. I was rather glad he did go, for I felt that the village was rather dull for such a brilliant young fellow; and I had a kind of pardonable pride in thinking that he would be fully competent to meet on their own level any pretentious people that might stray hither from more civilized centres. There is hardly, indeed, any great risk of meeting too intellectual people in Ireland just now. The anatomy of a horse is about the term and end of the acquired knowledge of the stronger sex; and the latest ball—well, this won't do! I must suspend this criticism, otherwise I shall wound, and that does not suit an old priest, who is beginning to hear the murmurs of the eternal seas.

Father Letheby walked over across the moor to the "Great House." It was growing dark when he left home, and he allowed himself a full hour, as he had to make some calls by the way. One of these calls led him to a house where an old woman was bedridden. Her son, a strong man of thirty years or more, was doing something strange when the priest unexpectedly entered. He was suffering from a scrofulous ulcer in the neck, and it was a hideous disfigurement. He had just been standing before a broken piece of looking-glass, stuck in the rough plaster of the wall; and he hastily hid something as the priest entered. Father Letheby's suspicions were instantly aroused. And he said hastily,—for he detested anything like concealment,—

"What have you been doing?"

"Nothing, your reverence," said the peasant, nervously.

"Then, what are you hiding?" said Father Letheby.

"Nothing, your reverence," said the poor fellow.

"Tell the priest, Ned, alanna," said the old woman from her bed. "Sure, 't is only a charm which the good 'oman has set, Father. And it's cured him already."

The young man scowled at his aged mother; and in response to an emphatic gesture from the priest, he pulled out a little coil of rope, partly worn at the end into a little wisp of flax.

"And are you such an utter fool," said the priest, angrily, holding the rope gingerly between his fingers, "as to believe that that wretched thing could cure you?"

"It has cured me," said the young man. "Look here!"

Father Letheby looked; and sure enough, there was but a faint scar, as of a burn, on the place where he knew well there had been a hideous running ulcer a few days ago. He was struck dumb.

"I am not surprised," he said, recovering himself rapidly; "I know Satan possesses supernatural power. But you, unhappy man, do you not know that it is to the devil you owe your cure?"

"I told him so, your reverence," whimpered the poor mother. "I said, better be sick forever, Ned, than break God's law. Sure, nothing good can come from it."

"Thin why did God allow it?" said the young man, angrily.

"If you knew anything of your religion," said the priest, "you might know that God permits evil things to happen. So much the worse for evil doers. You have committed grave sin."

"But, sure, this is good," said the poor fellow, feebly groping after theological lights, "and whatever is good comes from God."

"The effect may be good," said the priest, "the instrument is bad. What is that?" and he pointed to the rope that was dangling in his hand.

The young man was silent.

"You are afraid to tell? Now what is it? There's something uncanny about it?"

He fumbled with his vest, and looked sullenly into the darkening night.

"Then, as you won't answer, I'll take it with me," said the priest, folding the rope into a coil, and preparing to put it in his pocket.

There was a sullen smile around the young man's mouth.

"The owner will be looking for it," said he.

"Tell the owner that Father Letheby has it, and she can come to me for it," said the priest. He put the rope in his pocket and moved to the door.

"Don't! don't! Father dear," said the old woman. "It isn't good. Give it back, and Ned will give it to the good 'oman to-morrow."

"No! I shall give it myself," said the priest, "and a bit of my mind with it."

The young man moved to the door, and stood beside the priest.

"You would not touch it if you knew what it was," he whispered.

"What?" said Father Letheby.

"Do you remember old Simmons, the pinsioner, down at Lougheagle?"

"Who destroyed himself?"

"Yes! he hanged himself to a rafter in the barn."

"I remember having heard of it."

"He hanged himself with a rope."

"I presume so."

"Your reverence has the rope in your pocket."

The priest stepped back as if stung. The thing was so horrible that he lost his self-possession. Then a great flood of anger swept his soul; and taking the hideous instrument from his pocket, he passed over to the open hearth; with one or two turns of the wheel, that answers the purpose of a bellows in Ireland, he kindled the smouldering ashes into flame, buried the rope deep down in the glowing cinders, and watched it curl into a white ash, that bent and writhed like a serpent in pain. The old woman told her beads, and then blessed the priest, with, however, a tremor of nervous fear in her voice. The young man lifted his hat, as the priest, without a word, passed into the darkness.

"She'll be after asking for the rope, your reverence?" he said at length, when the priest had gone a few yards.

"Refer her to me," Father Letheby said. "And look here, young man," he cried, coming back and putting his face close to the peasant's, "I'd advise you to go to your confession as soon as you can, lest, in the words of Scripture, 'something worse happen to you.'"

It was a pleasant dinner party at the "Great House." Colonel Campion presided. Bittra sat opposite her father. Captain Ormsby, Inspector of Coast Guards, was near her. There were some bank officials from a neighboring town; Lord L——'s agent and his wife; a military surgeon; a widower, with two grown daughters; the new Protestant Rector and his wife. Father Letheby was very much pleased. He was again in the society that best suited his natural disposition. It was tolerably intelligent and refined. The lights, the flowers, the music, told on his senses, long numbed by the quietness and monotony of his daily life. He entered into the quiet pleasures of the evening with zest, made all around him happy, and even fascinated by the brilliancy with which he spoke, so much so that Bittra Campion said to him, as he was leaving about eleven o'clock:—

"Father, we are infinitely obliged to you."

He returned home, filled with a pleasant excitement, that was now so unusual to him in his quiet, uneventful life. The moonlight was streaming over sea and moorland, and he thought, as he passed over the little bridge that spanned the fiord, and stepped out into the broad road:—

"A delightful evening! But I must be careful. These Sybaritic banquets unfit a man for sterner work! I shall begin to hate my books and to loathe my little cabin. God forbid! But how pleasant it was all. And how Campion and Ormsby jumped at that idea of mine about the fishing schooner. I look on the matter now as accomplished. After all, perhaps, these Irish gentry are calumniated. Nothing could equal the ardor of these men for the welfare of the poor fishermen. Who knows? In six months' time, the 'Star of the Sea' may be ploughing the deep, and a fleet of sailing boats in her wake; and then the fish-curing stores, and, at last, the poor old village will look up and be known far and wide. Dear me! I must get that lovely song out of my brain, and the odor of those azaleas out of my senses. 'T will never do! A Kempis would shame me; would arraign me as a rebel and a traitor. What a lovely night! and how the waters sleep in the moonlight! Just there at the bend we'll build the new pier. I see already the 'Star of the Sea' putting out, and the waters whitening in her wake."

He looked around, and saw the cottages of the peasants and the laborers gleaming against the dark background of the moor and the mountain; and the thought smote him: Perhaps there some little children went to bed hungry to-night. He went home sadly, and, sitting down, he said:—

"Let me see! Soup, entrees, joints, sweets, fruits, wine, coffee. Let me see! White roses, azaleas, chrysanthemums. Let me see! Waldteufel, Strauss, Wagner! Let me see!"

He went over, and opened what appeared to be a rather highly decorated cupboard. He drew back three shutters, and revealed a triptych, sunk deep in the wall of his little parlor. It was the only thing of real value he held. It was given to him by a Roman lady, who, for one reason or another, chose to reside in England. It nearly filled the entire space on the low wall. As he drew back the shutters, the lamplight fell on the figure that occupied the whole of the central panel. It was the Christ. The tall shape was closely wrapped around in the Jewish kethoneth,—the first of the vestes albae of the priest, as St. John represents in the Apocalypse. The capouche fell loosely over His head, and was embroidered in many colors, as was also the hem of His long white robe, which fell in folds over His sandalled feet. The hood of the capouche shaded His eyes and threw a dark shadow on the face as far as the lips. But the sacred figure also held its right hand to shelter the eyes more deeply from a strong glare of sunset. The left hand fell loosely by His side, and the first of a large flock of sheep had nestled its head comfortably in the open palm. The large, gray eyes of Christ were filled with an anxious light, as they gazed over the silent desert, questing for some lost object; and the mouth, lightly fringed with beard, was querulous with pain and solicitude. It was a beautiful picture,—one worthy to be screened from indevout eyes, or revealed only to those who loved and worshipped.

The young priest gazed long and lovingly at this presentment of his Divine Master, whom he loved with the strongest personal affection. Then he knelt down and pressed his forehead against the dust-stained feet of Christ, and moaned:—

"Master, if I have done wrong in aught this night, let me know it! If I have betrayed Thy interests, or brought Thy Name to shame, teach me in the sharpest tones and flames of Thy anger, for I need a monitor; and where shall I find so loving or so truthful a monitor as Thou? Alas! how weak and pitiful I am, and how this poor unsubdued nature of mine craves for things beyond Thee! I know there is no truth but in Thee,—no sincerity, no constancy. I know what men are; how deceitful in their words; how unkind in their judgments. Yet this lower being within my being forever stretches out its longings to sensible things that deceive, and will not rest in Thee, who art all Truth. But I must be brought back to Thee through the sharp pangs of trial and tears. Spare me not, O Master! only do not punish with the deprivation of Thy Love!"

He rose up strengthened, yet with a premonition in his heart of great trials awaiting him. Who would dream of such tragic things under the heavy skies and the dull environments of life in Ireland?



CHAPTER VIII

OUR CONCERT

The winter stole in quietly, heralded by the white frosts of late October; and nothing occurred to disturb the quiet of the village, except that Father Letheby's horse, a beautiful bay, ran suddenly lame one evening, as he topped a hill, and a long reach of mountain lay before him on his way to a sick-call. There were, of course, a hundred explanations from as many amateurs as to the cause of the accident. Then a quiet farmer, who suspected something, found a long needle driven deep into the hoof. It had gone deeper and deeper as the action of the horse forced it, until it touched the quick, and the horse ran dead lame. The wound festered, and the animal had to be strung up with leather bands to the roof of his stable for three months. Father Letheby felt the matter acutely; but it was only to myself he murmured the one significant word, Ahriman.

Late one evening in November a deputation waited on me. It consisted of the doctor, the schoolmaster, and one or two young fellows, generally distinguished by their vocal powers at the public house, when they were asked for "their fisht and their song." The doctor opened negotiations. I have a great regard for the doctor, and he knows it. He is a fine young fellow, a great student, and good and kind to the poor. I often spent a pleasant hour in his surgery over his microscope, where I saw wonderful things; but what has haunted me most is the recollection of a human brain, which the doctor had preserved in spirits, and on which he has given me several lectures. I remember well my sensations when I first held the soft, dark, pulpy mass in my hand. All that I had ever read in psychology and metaphysics came back to me. This is the instrument of God's masterpiece,—the human soul. Over these nodes and fissures it floated, like the spirit of God over the face of the deep. Here, as on a beautiful instrument, the spirit touched the keys, and thought, like music, came forth; and here were impressed indelibly ideas of the vast universe without, of time and eternity; yea, even of the Infinite and Transcendent,—of God. Hushed in the silence of prayer, here the soul brooded as a dove above its nest; and here in moments of temptation and repentance, it argued, reasoned, prayed, implored the inferior powers that rebelled or recanted beneath. With what sublime majesty it ruled and swayed the subjects that owned its imperial dominion; and how it touched heaven on the one hand for pity, and earth on the other in power! And when the turbulent passions raged and stormed, it soothed and quelled their rebellion; and then, in recompense to itself, it went out and up towards the celestials, and joined its emancipated sisters before the great white throne, and drank in peace and the blessedness of calm from the silences and worship of Heaven. Where is that soul now? Whither has it gone? Silent is the instrument, just crumbling to inevitable decay. But where in the boundless ocean of space is the deathless spirit that once ruled it in majesty, and drew from it music whose echoes roll through eternity? And how has science mapped and parcelled it, like a dead planet. Here is the "island of Reil," here the "pons Varolii"; here is the "arbor vitae"; and here is the "subarachnoid space"; and here that wonderful contrivance of the great Designer that regulates the arterial supplies. I lift my hat reverentially and whisper, Laudate!

Well, the doctor knew how much I appreciated him. He was not nervous, therefore, in broaching the subject.

"We have come to see you, sir, about a concert."

"A what?" I said.

"A concert," he replied, in a little huff. "They have concerts every winter over at Labbawally, and at Balreddown, and even at Moydore; and why shouldn't we?"

I thought a little.

"I always was under the impression," I said, "that a concert meant singers."

"Of course," they replied.

"Well, and where are you to get singers here? Are you going to import again those delectable harridans that illustrated the genius of Verdi with rather raucous voices a few weeks ago?"

"Certainly not, sir," they replied in much indignation. "The boys here can do a little in that way; and we can get up a chorus amongst the school-children; and—and—"

"And the doctor himself will do his share," said one of the deputation, coming to the aid of the modest doctor.

"And then," I said, "you must have a piano to accompany you, unless it is to be all in the style of 'come-all-yeen's.'"

"Oh, 't will be something beyond that," said the doctor. "I think you'll be surprised, sir."

"And what might the object of the concert be?" I asked.

"Of course, the poor," they all shouted in chorus. "Wait, your reverence," said one diplomatist, "till you see all we'll give you for the poor at Christmas."

Visions of warm blankets for Nelly Purcell, and Mag Grady; visions of warm socks for my little children; visions of tons of coal and cartloads of timber; visions of vast chests of tea and mountains of currant-cake swam before my imagination; and I could only say:—

"Boys, ye have my blessing."

"Thank your reverence," said the doctor. "But what about a subscription?"

"For what?" I said. "If we all have to subscribe, what is the meaning of the concert?"

"Ah, but you know, sir, there are preliminary expenses,—getting music, etc.,—and we must ask the respectable people to help us there."

This meant the usual guinea. Of course, they got it.

The evening of the concert came, and I was very reluctant to leave my arm-chair and the fire and the slippers. And now that my curate and I had set to work steadily at our Greek authors, to show the Bishop we could do something, I put aside my Homer with regret, and faced the frost of November. The concert was held in the old store down by the creek; and I shivered at the thought of two hours in that dreary room, with the windows open and a sea draught sweeping through. To my intense surprise, I gave up my ticket to a well-dressed young man with a basket of flowers in his button-hole; and I passed into a hall where the light blinded me, and I was dazed at the multitude of faces turned towards me. And there was a great shout of cheering; and I took off my great-coat, and was glad I had come.

There was a stage in front, covered with plants and carpeted; and a grand piano peeped out from a forest of shrubs and palms; and lamps twinkled everywhere; and I began to think it was all a dream, when Miss Campion came over, and said she was so glad I had come, etc., and I whispered:—

"I understand all now, when I see the little witch that has made the transformation."

Father Letheby sat by me, quiet and demure, as usual. He looked as if he had known nothing of all this wonder-working; and when I charged him solemnly with being chief organizer, builder, framer, and designer in all this magic, he put me off gently:—

"You know we must educate the people, sir. And you know our people are capable of anything."

I believed him.

Presently, there was a great stir at the end of the long room, and I looked around cautiously; for we were all so grand, I felt I should be dignified indeed.

"Who are these gentry, coming up the centre of the hall?" I whispered; for a grand procession was streaming in.

"Gentry?" he said. "Why, these are the performers." They were just passing,—dainty little maidens, in satin from the bows in their wavy and crisp locks down to their white shoes; and they carried bouquets, and a subtle essence of a thousand odors filled the air.

"Visitors at the Great House?" I whispered.

"Not at all," he cried impatiently. "They are our own children. There's Mollie Lennon, the smith's daughter; and there's Annie Logan, whose father sells you the mackerel; and there's Tessie Navin, and Maudie Kennedy, and—"

"Who's that grand young lady, with her hair done up like the Greek girls of Tanagra?" I gasped.

"Why, that's Alice Moylan, the monitress."

"Good heavens," was all I could say. And the doctor sailed in with his cohort, all in swallow-tails and white fronts, their hair plastered down or curled, like the fiddlers in an orchestra; and the doctor stooped down and saw my amazement, and whispered:—

"Didn't I tell you we'd surprise you, Father Dan?"

Just then a young lad, dressed like a doll, and with white kid gloves, handed me a perfumed programme.

"I charge a penny all around, but not to you, Father Dan."

I thanked him politely and with reverence.

"Who's that young gentleman?" I whispered.

"Don't you know him?" said Father Letheby, smothering a laugh.

"I never saw him before," I said.

"You cuffed him last Sunday for ringing the bell at the Agnus Dei."

"I cuffed that young ruffian, Carl Daly," I said.

"That's he," said Father Letheby. Then I thought Father Letheby was making fun of me, and I was getting cross, when I heard, "Hush!" and Miss Campion rose up and passed on to the stage, and took her place at the piano, and with one little wave of the hand, she marshalled them into a crescent, and then there was a pause, and then—a crash of music that sent every particle of blood in my old body dancing waltzes, and I began to feel that I was no longer Daddy Dan, the old pastor of Kilronan, but a young curate that thinks life all roses, for his blood leaps up in ecstasy, and his eyes are straining afar.

One by one the singers came forward, timid, nervous, but they went through their parts well. At last, a young lady, with bronze curls cut short, but running riot over her head and forehead, came forward. She must have dressed in an awful hurry, for she forgot a lot of things.

"What's the meaning of this?" I whispered angrily.

"Sh', 't is the fashion," said Father Letheby. "She's not from our parish."

"Thank God," I said fervently. I beckoned to Mrs. Mullins, a fine motherly woman, who sat right across the aisle. She came over.

"Have you any particular use of that shawl lying on your lap, Mrs. Mullins?" I said.

"No," she said, "I brought it against the night air."

"Then you'd do a great act of charity," I said, "if you'd just step up on that stage and give it to that young lady to cover her shoulders and arms. She'll catch her death of cold."

"For all the money you have in the National Bank, Father Dan," said Mrs. Mullins, "and they say you have a good little nest there, I wouldn't do it. See how she's looking at us. She knows we are talking about her. And her mother is Julia Lonergan, who lives at the Pike, in the parish of Moydore."

Sure enough, Phoebe Lonergan, for that was her name, was looking at us; and her eyes were glinting and sparkling blue and green lights, like the dog-star on a frosty night in January. And I knew her mother well. When Julia Lonergan put her hands on her hips, and threw back her head, the air became sulphurous and blue. I determined not to mind the scantiness of the drapery, though I should not like to see any of my own little children in such a state. Whilst I was meditating thus, she came to the end of her song; and then let a yell out of her that would startle a Red Indian.

"Why did she let that screech out of her?" said I to Father Letheby. "Was it something stuck in her?"

"Oh, not at all," said he, "that's what they call a bravura."

I began to feel very humble. And then a queer thing happened. I thought I was a young curate, long before the days of Maynooth statutes, and all these new regulations that bind us as tightly as Mrs. Darcy's new alb. We were out at the hunt on a glorious November morning, the white frost on the grass, and the air crisp and sunny. The smell of the fields, the heather, and the withered bracken, came to us, and the bay coats and the black coats of the horses shone like silk in the sunlight. There were the usual courtesies, the morning salutes, and the ladies' smiles; and then we moved to the cover, the dogs quivering with excitement, and we not too composed. And then far across the ploughed field we saw the arch-enemy, Reynard, his brush straight out from his back; and with one shout, Hoicks! and Harkaway! we broke out into the open, and, with every nerve and muscle strained, and the joy of the chase in our hearts, we leaped onward to the contest. All the exhilaration and intense joy of youth and freedom and the exercise of life were in my veins, and I shouted Tally-ho! Harkaway, my boys! at the top of my voice.

A gentle hand was laid on mine, and I awoke from my dream. The people were all smiling gravely, and the chorus was just finishing the last bars of that best of all finales: Tally-ho! It was the witchery of the music that called up the glorious past.

Then there was hunting for shawls and wraps, and such a din:—

"Wasn't it grand, Father Dan?"

"Aren't you proud of your people, Father Dan?"

"Where is Moydore now, Father Dan?"

"Didn't we do well, Father Dan?"

And then Miss Campion came over demurely and asked:—

"I hope you were pleased with our first performance, Father?"

And what could I say but that it was all beautiful and grand, and I hoped to hear it repeated, etc.

But then, when I had exhausted my enthusiasm, a band of these young fairies, their pretty faces flushed with excitement, and the stars in their curls bobbing and nodding at me, came around me.

"It's now our turn, Father Dan. We want one little dance before we go."

"What?" I cried, "children like you dancing! I'd be well in my way, indeed. Come now, sing 'Home, Sweet Home,' and away to Blanketland as fast as you can."

"Ah, do, Father Dan!"

"Ah, do, Father Dan!"

"One little dance!"

"We'll be home in half an hour!"

"Ah do, Daddy Dan!"

There was consternation. I knew that I was called by that affectionate, if very undignified title; but this was the first time it was spoken to my face; and there was horror on the faces of the young ones. But it carried the day. I looked around, and saw some white waistcoats peeping shyly behind a glass door.

"The boys are all gone home, I believe?" I said innocently.

"Oh, long and merry ago, Father. The lazy fellows wouldn't wait."

"And all the dancing will be amongst yourselves?"

Chorus: "Of course, Father!"

"And no waltzes or continental abominations?"

Chorus: "Oh dear, no!"

"And you'll all be in your beds at twelve o'clock?"

Chorus: "To the minute, Father."

"Well, God forgive me, but what can I do? Go on, you little heathens, and—"

"Thank you, Father—"

"Thank you, Father—"

"Thank you, Father—," etc., etc.

I went home with a troubled conscience, and I read that blessed Maynooth statute about dances. Then I had no sleep that night.

The doctor and the deputation called on me about a fortnight later to settle accounts. I thought they were not very enthusiastic. They left the door open, and sat near it.

"We came to settle about the concert, sir," said the doctor; "we thought you'd would like to see our balance-sheet."



"Yes," I said, demurely, "and, of course, if the balance itself was convenient—"

"It isn't as much as we thought," said the doctor, laying a small brown parcel on the table. "The expenses were enormous. Now, look at these," he said, softly detaining my hand, as it moved towards the parcel.

I read the list of expenses. It was appalling. I cast a corner of my eye farther down, and read, without pretending to see anything:—

"Total balance = 4s. 11-1/2d."

"Boys," said I, as I saw them putting their hands over their mouths with that unmistakable Hibernian gesture, "you have done yourselves a great injustice."

"I assure you, sir," said the schoolmaster—

"You mistake my meaning," I interrupted. "What I was about to say was this,—when young men give their services gratuitously, and undertake great labor in the cause of religion and charity, it would be most unfair to expect that they would also make a pecuniary sacrifice."

They looked relieved.

"Now, I have reason to know that you all have undergone great expense in connection with this concert."

There was a smirk of pharisaical satisfaction on their faces.

"But I cannot allow it. My conscience would not permit me. I see no record in this balance-sheet of the three dozen of Guinness that was ordered for the dressing-room. And there is not a word about the box of Havanas, which William Mescal ordered specially from Dublin; nor any mention of the soda-water and accompaniments that were hauled up in a basket through the back window. Really, I cannot allow it, gentlemen, your generosity is overpowering—"

The deep silence made me look around. They had vanished. I opened the brown parcel, and counted four shillings and eleven-pence halfpenny in coppers.



CHAPTER IX

SEVERELY REPRIMANDED

It was quite impossible that these changes or innovations could take place without a certain amount of reclamation, to use the theological expression, amongst the brethren. We are a conservative race, and our conservatism has been eminently successful in that matter of supreme moment,—the preservation of the faith and the purity of our people. It is difficult, therefore, to see the necessity of change, to meet the exigencies of the times, and the higher demands of the nation and the race. Yet we have been forewarned a hundred times that we cannot put new wine into old bottles, and that a spirit is stirring amongst our people that must become unbridled and incontinent if not guided by new methods and new ideas. This is not intuitive wisdom on my part. It is gathered slowly and painfully amongst the thorns of experience.

But I cannot say I was too surprised when, one morning, an old and most valued friend called on me, and revealed his anxiety and perturbation of spirit by some very deep remarks about the weather. We agreed wonderfully on that most harmonious topic, and then I said:—

"You have something on your mind?"

"To be candid with you, Father Dan," he replied, assuming a sudden warmth, "I have. But I don't like to be intrusive."

"Oh, never mind," I replied. "I am always open to fraternal correction."

"You know," he continued nervously, "we are old friends, and I have always had the greatest interest in you—"

"For goodness' sake, Father James," I said, "spare me all that. That is all subintellectum, as the theologians say when they take a good deal for granted."

"Well, then," said he,—for this interruption rather nettled him,—"to be very plain with you, your parish is going to the dogs. You are throwing up the sponge and letting this young man do what he likes. Now, I can tell you the people don't like it, the priests don't like it, and when he hears it, as he is sure to hear it, the Bishop won't like it either."

"Well, Father James," I said slowly, "passing by the mixed metaphors about the dogs and the sponge, what are exactly the specific charges made against this young man?"

"Everything," he replied vaguely. "We don't want young English mashers coming around here to teach old priests their business. We kept the faith—"

"Spare me that," I said. "And don't say a word about the famine years. That episode, and the grandeur of the Irish priests, is written in Heaven. We want a Manzoni to tell it,—that is, if we would not prefer to leave it unrecorded, except in the great book,—which is God's memory."

He softened a little at this.

"Now," said I, "you are a wise man. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to pitch into that young fellow," he said, "to cuff him and make him keep his place."

"Very good. But be particular. Tell me, what am I to say?"

"Say? Tell him you'll stand no innovations in your parish. Nil innovetur, nisi quod prius traditum est. Tell him that he must go along with all the other priests of the diocese and conform to the general regulations,—Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. Tell him that young men must know their place; and then take up the Selva, or the Fathers, and prove it to him."

"God bless you!" said I, thankfully and humbly. "You have taken a load off my heart. Now, let me see would this do."

I took down from the dusty shelves a favorite little volume,—a kind of Anthology of the early Fathers, and I opened it.

"We'll try the sortes Virgilianae" I said, and read slowly and with emphasis:—

"At nunc, etiam sacerdotes Dei, omissis Evangeliis et Prophetis, vidimus comoedias legere, amatoria Bucolicorum versuum verba cantare, tenere Virgilium, et id quod in pueris necessitatis est, crimen in se facere voluptatis."

"That's not bad," said my hearer, critically, whilst I held the book open with horror and amazement. "That applies to him, I'm sure. But what's the matter, Father Dan? You are not ill?"

"No," said I, "I'm not; but I'm slightly disconcerted. That anathema strikes me between the two eyes. What else have I been doing for fifty years but thumbing Horace and Virgil?"

"Oh, never mind," he said, airily. "Who wrote that? That's extreme, you know."

"An altogether wise and holy man, called St. Jerome," I said.

"Ah, well, he was a crank. I don't mean that. That sounds disrespectful. But he was a reformer, you know."

"A kind of innovator, like this young man of mine?" I said.

"Ah, well, try some sensible saint. Try now St. Bernard. He was a wise, gentle adviser."

I turned to St. Bernard, and read:—

"Lingua magniloqua—manus otiosa! Sermo multus—fructus nullus! Vultus gravis—actus levis! Ingens auctoritas—nutans stabilitas!"

That hit my friend between the eyes. The auguries were inauspicious. He took up his hat.

"You are not going?" said I, reaching for the bell. "I am just sending for Father Letheby to let you see how I can cuff him—"

"I—I—must be going," he said; "I have a sick-call—that is—an engagement—I—er—expect a visitor—will call again. Good day."

"Stay and have a glass of wine!" I said.

"No, no, many thanks; the mare is young and rather restive. Au revoir!"

"Au revoir!" I replied, as I took up my hat and gold-headed cane and set out to interview and reprimand my curate. Clearly, something should be done, and done quickly. There was a good deal of talk abroad, and I was supposed to be sinking into a condition of senile incompetence. It is quite true that I could not challenge my curate's conduct in a single particular. He was in all things a perfect exemplar of a Christian priest, and everything he had done in the parish since his arrival contributed to the elevation of the people and the advancement of religion. But it wouldn't do. Every one said so; and, of course, every one in these cases is right. And yet there was some secret misgiving in my mind that I should do violence to my own conscience were I to check or forbid Father Letheby's splendid work; and there came a voice from my own dead past to warn me: "See that you are not opposing the work of the right hand of the Most High."

These were my doubts and apprehensions as I moved slowly along the road that led in a circuitous manner around the village and skirted the path up to the school-house. I woke from my unpleasant reverie to hear the gentle murmur of voices, moving rhythmically as in prayer; and in a short bend of the road I came face to face with the children leaving school. I had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, three by three, and all chanting in a sweet, low tone—the Rosary. The centre girl was the coryphaeus with the "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys"; the others, the chorus. I stood still in amazement and challenged them:—

"I am happy to see my little children so well employed. How long since you commenced to say the Rosary thus in common?"

In a twinkling the solemnity vanished and I was surrounded by a chattering group.

"Just a week, Fader; and Fader Letheby, Fader, he tould us of a place where they do be going to work in the morning, Fader, and dey all saying de Rosary togeder, Fader; and den, Fader, we do be saying to ourselves, why shouldn't we, Fader, say de Rosary coming to school, de same as dese Germans, Fader?"

"That's excellent," I said, running my eyes over the excited group; "and have you all got beads?"

"I have, Fader," said one of the coryphaei, "and de oders do be saying it on their fingers."

"I must get beads for every one of you," I said; "and to commence, here, Anstie, is my own."

I gave a little brown-eyed child my own mother-of-pearl beads, mounted in silver, and was glad I had it to give. The children moved away, murmuring the Rosary as before.

Now, here clearly was an innovation. Wasn't this intolerable? Who ever heard the like? Where would all this stop? Why, the parish is already going to the dogs! He has played right into my hands. Yes? Stop the Rosary? Prevent the little children from singing the praises of their Mother and Queen? I thought I saw the face of the Queen Mother looking at me from the skies; and I heard a voice saying, prophetically: "Ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos, ut destruas inimicum et ultorem." Clearly, the fates are against me.

"Father Letheby was not at home, but would be back presently. Would I take a chair and wait for a few moments?"

I sat down in a comfortable arm-chair lined with the soft rug that first elicited my housekeeper's admiration. I looked around. Books were strewn here and there, but there was no slovenliness or untidiness; and, ha! there were the first signs of work on the white sheets of manuscript paper. I wonder what is he writing about. It is not quite honorable, but as I am on the war path, perhaps I could get here a pretext for scalping him. Notes!

"November 1. Dipped into several numbers of Cornhill Magazine. Specially pleased with an article on 'Wordsworth's Ethics,' in the August number, 1876.

"November 2. Read over Sir J. Taylor's poems, principally 'Philip van Artevelde,' 'Isaac Comnenus,' 'Edwin the Fair,' the 'Eve of the Conquest.'

"Comnenus.—Not much the doubt Comnenus would stand well with times to come, Were there the hand to write his threnody, Yet is he in sad truth a faulty man.

* * * * *

But be it said he had this honesty, That, undesirous of a false renown, He ever wished to pass for what he was, One that swerved much, and oft, but being still Deliberately bent upon the right, Had kept it in the main; one that much loved Whate'er in man is worthy high respect, And in his soul devoutly did aspire To be it all: yet felt from time to time The littleness that clings to what is human, And suffered from the shame of having felt it."

"Humph! This is advanced," I thought. "I wonder does he feel like Comnenus? It is a noble portrait, and well worthy imitation."

Just then he came in. After the usual greetings he exclaimed, in a tone of high delight:—

"Look here, Father, here's a delicious tit-bit. Confess you never read such a piece of sublime self-conceit before."

He took up a review that was lying open on the desk, and read this:—

"As for claims, these are my opinions. If Lord Liverpool takes simply the claims of the scholar, Copleston's are fully equal to mine. So, too, in general knowledge the world would give it in favor of him. If Lord Liverpool looks to professional merits, mine are to Copleston's as the Andes to a molehill. There is no comparison between us; Copleston is no theologue; I am. If, again, Lord Liverpool looks to weight and influence in the University, I will give Copleston a month's start and beat him easily in any question that comes before us. As to popularity in the appointment, mine will be popular through the whole profession; Copleston's the contrary.... I thought, as I tell you, honestly, I should be able to make myself a bishop in due time.... I will conclude by telling you my own real wishes about myself. My anxious desire is to make myself a great divine, and to be accounted the best in England. My second wish is to become the founder of a school of theology at Oxford. Now, no bishopric will enable me to do this but the See of Oxford. I have now told you my most secret thoughts. What I desire is, after a few years, to be sure of a retirement, with good provision in some easy bishopric, or Van Mildert deanery. I want neither London nor Canterbury: they will never suit me. But I want money, because I am poor and have children; and I desire character, because I cannot live without it."

"Isn't that simply delicious?" said Father Letheby, laying down the review, and challenging my admiration.

"Poor fellow," I could not help saying; "the last little bit of pathos about his children gilds the wretched picture. Who was he?"

"No less a person than Dr. Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford, and the originator of the Tractarian Movement. But can you conceive a Catholic priest writing such a letter?"

"No," I replied slowly, "I cannot. But I can conceive a Catholic priest thinking it. I am not so much unlike the rest of mankind; and I remember when I came out on the mission, and had time to look around me, like a chicken just out of its shell, two things gave me a shock of intense surprise. First, I could not conceive how the Catholic Church had got on for eighteen hundred years without my cooperation and ability; and, secondly, I could not understand what fatuity possessed the Bishop to appoint as his vicar-general a feeble old man of seventy, who preached with hesitation, and, it was whispered, believed the world was flat, and that people were only joking when they spoke of it as a globe; and pass over such a paragon of perfection, an epitome of all the talents, like myself. It took me many years to recover from that surprise; and, alas! a little trace of it lingers yet. Believe me, my dear young friend, a good many of us are as alien in spirit to the Imitation as Dr. Lloyd, but we must not say it."

"By Jove!" he said, "I thought there was but one other Dr. Lloyd in the world, and that was Father James——," mentioning the name of my morning visitor.

It was the first chink I had seen in the armor of my young Goliath, and I put in my rapier.

"You are not very busy?" I said.

"No, Father," he replied, surprised.

"Would you have time to listen to a little story?"

"Certainly," he said, settling back in his chair, his head on his hands.

"Well," I said slowly, "in the first years of my mission I had a fellow curate, a good many years younger than myself. I consequently looked down on him, especially as he was slightly pompous in his manner and too much addicted to Latin and French quotations. In fact, he looked quite a hollow fellow, and apparently a selfish and self-contented one. I changed my opinion later on. He was particularly fond of horses, though he never rode. He was a kind of specialist in horseflesh. His opinion was regarded as infallible. He never kept any but the highest breed of animal. He had a particularly handsome little mare, which he called 'Winnie,' because he thought he saw in her some intelligence, like what he read of in the famous mare of a famous Robin Hood. She knew him, and followed him like a dog. He allowed no one to feed her, or even to groom her, but himself. He never touched her with a whip. He simply spoke to her, or whistled, and she did all he desired. He had refused one hundred and fifty pounds for her at a southern fair a few days before the occurrence which I am about to relate. One day he had been at conference, or rather we were both there, for he drove me to the conference and back. It was thirteen miles going and the same returning. The little mare came back somewhat fagged. He was no light-weight, nor was I.

"'I shall not drive her there again,' he said; 'I'll get an old hack for these journeys.'

"Before he sat down to dinner he fed and groomed her, and threw her rug over her for the night. She whinnied with pleasure at reaching her own stable. Just as he sat down to dinner a sick-call was announced. It was declared 'urgent.' After a while you won't be too much alarmed at these 'urgent' calls, for they generally mean but little; but on this occasion a short note was put into the priest's hand. It was from the doctor. It ran: 'Come as quickly as possible. It is a most critical case.'

"There was no choice there.

"'Have you brought a horse?' the priest cried.

"'No, your reverence,' said the messenger. 'I crossed down the mountain by the goat-path. There was no time.'

"The priest went straight to the stable and unlocked it. The mare whinnied, for she knew his footstep. He flashed the light upon her as she turned her big eyes towards him.

"'Come, little woman,' he said, 'we must be on the road again.'

"She understood him, and moaned.

"He led her out and put her to his trap. Then, without a word, he gave her the rein, and they pushed on in the darkness. The road for five miles was as level as that table, and she went rapidly forward. Then a steep hill rose before them for about two miles, and he relaxed a little, not wishing to drive her against the hill. Just then, on the brow he saw lights flashing and waving to and fro in the night. He knew the significance of it, and shook out the reins. The poor little animal was so tired she could not breast the hill. He urged her forward. She refused. Then, for the first time in his life, he took out his whip. He did not strike her, and to this day he thanks God for it. But he merely shook it over her head. Stung by the indignity, she drew herself together and sprang against the hill. She went up and up, like a deer, whilst the trap jolted and swung from side to side. Just as they reached the crest of the hill and heard the shouts, 'Hurry, your reverence, you'll never overtake her,' the little mare plunged forward and fell heavily. The priest was flung against a boulder and struck insensible. When he came to, the first word he heard was, 'She's dead, I fear, your reverence.' 'Who?' said the priest; 'the woman?' 'No, your reverence, but the mare!' 'Thank God!' said the priest; and he meant it. Dazed, stupefied, bleeding, he stumbled across rocks of red sandstone, heather, gorse; he slipped over some rude stepping-stones that crossed a mountain torrent; and, at last, made his way to the rude cabin in the rough gorges of the mountain. The doctor was washing his instruments as the priest entered.

"'It's all right, Father James,' he said cheerily. 'The neatest case I ever had. But it was touch and go. Hello! you're bleeding on the temple. What's up?'

"'Oh, nothing,' said the priest. 'The mare stumbled and threw me. I may go in?'

"'Certainly,' said the doctor; 'but just allow me to wash that ugly wound.'

"'Wound? 't is only a scratch.'

"The priest went in and went through his ordinary ministrations. Then he came out, and still dazed and not knowing what to think, he stumbled back to the crest of the mountain road. There were men grouped around the fallen animal and the broken trap. They made way for him. He knelt down by the poor beast and rubbed her ears, as he was in the habit of doing, and whispered, 'Winnie!' The poor animal opened her eyes full upon him, then trembled convulsively, and died.

"'You will bury her, boys,' said the priest, 'over there under that cairn of stones, and bring me down the trap and harness in the morning.'

"What his feelings were, as he walked home, I leave you to realize. We did not hear of it for some days; but that 'Thank God!' changed all my opinions of him. I looked up to him ever since, and see under all his pomposity and dignity a good deal of the grit that makes a man a hero or a saint."

"I retract my remark unreservedly," said my curate; "it was unjust and unfair. It is curious that I have never yet made an unkind remark but I met with prompt punishment."

"You may not be a great theologian nor a deep thinker," said I, "but no man ever uttered a more profound saying. God may ignore our petty rebellions against Himself; but when we, little mites, sit in contemptuous judgment on one another, He cannot keep His hands from us! And so, festina lente! festina lente! It is wholesome advice, given in many languages."

"Is the accent on the festina or the lente, Father?" he said demurely.

I looked at him.

"Because," he said, "I have been doing things lately that sometimes seem inopportune,—that concert for example, and—"

"They are all right," I said, "but lente! lente!!"

"And that little interview with the chapel woman,—I felt I could have done better—?"

"It is all right," I repeated, "but lente! lente!!"

"And I think we must stop those little children from saying the Rosary—"

This time I looked at him quite steadily. He was imperturbable and sphinx-like.

"Good evening," I said. "Come up after dinner and let us have a chat about that line in the 'Odes' we were speaking about."

I went homewards slowly, and, as I went, the thought would obtrude itself, how far I had recovered my lost authority, and succeeded in satisfying that insatiable monster called Public Opinion. For my curate had been reading for me a story by some American author, in which the narrative ended in a problem whether a lady or a tiger would emerge from a cage under certain circumstances; and hence, a conundrum was puzzling the world,—the tiger or the lady, which? And my conundrum was, Had I lectured my curate, or had my curate lectured me? I am trying to solve the problem to this day.



CHAPTER X

OVER THE WALNUTS, AND THE ——

Father Letheby did come up, and we had one of those pleasant meetings on which my memory dwells with gratitude. I hope he thinks of them tenderly, too; for I believe he gave more pleasure and edification than he received. We old men are garrulous, and rather laudatory of the past than enthusiastic about the present. And this must needs chafe the nerves of those whose eyes are always turned toward the sanguine future. Well, this evening we had the famous epilogue of the Third Book of the Odes of Horace for discussion, and our thoughts turned on the poet's certainty of immortality,—the immortality of fame, in which alone he believed. I remarked what a curious thing it was that men are forever craving for that which, when attained, they fling aside and despise.

"I remember a good old priest," I said, "who was very angry because he did not receive the ecclesiastical honors that sometimes accompany old age. And when I asked, rather foolishly indeed, of what possible use could they be to him, the answer was, he would like to die with his full meed of honors. Well, he got them at last; and after a few months his regret was that he had spent nine pounds on the rochet and mozetta."

"Do you think he would be satisfied to go back to the condition of a 'simplex sacerdos' again, and to be called 'Father'?" said my curate.

"I do. He had received recognition and was satisfied," I replied.

"There must be something in it. I remember now that bitter letter about Fame, which Tennyson wrote when he had attained a world-wide reputation. He found Fame to be hostility from his peers, indifference from his superiors, worship from those he despised. He would barter all his Fame for L5,000 a year; and was sorry he ever wrote a line."

"What then is it all? Of what consequence was it to Horace that a poor old priest, in the Ultima Thule of the earth, should find a little pleasure in his lines, some eighteen hundred years after his death?" I said, half musingly.

"None whatever. But these passions are the minor wheels of human action, and therefore of human progress, when the great motor, religion, is set aside."

"And you think God permits them for that reason?"

"Possibly. By the way, Father Dan, allow me to congratulate you on your excellent taste. Why, you have made this little parlor a nest of luxury and refinement."

"Alas! yes. But all my comfort is gone. I blame you for it all, you rascal. Why did you come introducing your civilization here? We were happy enough without it. And like Fame, luxury brings its trials. Hannah wasn't easy until she rivalled your splendid establishment; and when taste came in, comfort went out by the window. God bless me! All I have suffered for the last fortnight! I must wipe my boots at the door, and hang up my hat in the hall, and walk on tiptoe on these waxed floors. I am afraid to sit down, lest I should break these doll's chairs. I am afraid to get up lest I should slip and break my old bones. I am afraid to eat lest I should soil those new napkins. I am afraid to drink lest I should break one of these new gilt cups. I have no comfort but in bed. What in the world did I do that you should have been sent here?"

"There's something in it," he said, laughing. "It is the universal law of compensation. But, honestly, it is all very tasteful and neat, and you'll get used to it. You know it is one of the new and laughable arguments against the eternity of punishment, that you can get used to anything."

"I can't get that poor fellow, Lloyd, out of my head," I said, changing the subject. "That was a pitiful letter. And the pity is that a strictly private document, such as that was, should see the light and be discussed fifty years after it was written, by two priests on the west coast of Ireland To whom did he write it?"

"To Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister."

"There was a dear old friend of my youth," I said, "who was fond of giving advice. I suppose I picked up the evil habit from him. But his summary of all wisdom was this:—

"Never consult a doctor!

"Never go security!

"Never write a letter that may not be read in the market square!"

"I hope you have followed this sapient, but rather preternatural advice," said Father Letheby.

"No," I replied. "It would have been well for me if I had done so."

We both lapsed into a brown study.

"It is not easy for us priests to take advice," he said at last; "I suppose our functions are so magisterial that we cannot understand even the suggestion of inferiority in reproof. Was it not Dean Stanley who said that the Anglican clergy are polished into natural perfection by domestic interchanges of those silent corrections that are so necessary, and that it is the absence of these correctives that accounts for the so many nodes and excrescences of our social characteristics?"

"True. But we won't take correction. Or rather, no one dare give it. The Bishop can and will; but then a word from a bishop smites like a Nasmyth hammer, and he is necessarily slow of reproof. A Parish priest nowadays dare not correct a curate—"

"I beg pardon, sir," Father Letheby said; "I am sure you'll do me an infinite favor if you kindly point out my many imprudences and inconsistencies."

"And you'll take it well?"

"Well," he said dubiously, "I won't promise that I shall not be nettled. But I'll take it respectfully."

"All right. We'll commence this moment. Give up that coffee-drinking, and take an honest glass of punch."

He laughed in his own musical way. He knew the anguish that coffee had cost Hannah. She had taken to Father Letheby wonderfully. He had found for her a new brand of snuff, and had praised her cooking. And lo! a miracle. Hannah, the Parish priest's housekeeper, had actually gone down and visited his servant. It was a tremendous condescension, involving a great deal of thought. But there was a new alliance,—dual again; it is almost like the kaleidoscopic changes of European politicians. Then for several days there were conferences and colloguings, the result being that, as a reward of humility, which indeed always brings its reward even in this world, Hannah has her house furnished a la mode, and has learned the science of coffee-making,—a science little known as yet in Ireland. Of course, there have been crosses. It is not pleasant, when a brother priest comes in, to see him stand in amazement and appear quite distracted whilst his politeness will not allow him to demand explanations. And when a more demonstrative character shouts Hallo! when he comes into your parlor, and vents his surprise in a prolonged whistle, and looks at you curiously when your attention is engaged, it is slightly embarrassing. Then, again, I'm told that the villagers are making sarcastic remarks about my little menage: "Begor, Hannah won't be left a pinny"; or, "Begor, Kilronan is looking up"; or, "Begor, he'll be expecting an incrase of the jues"; and one old woman, who gets an occasional letter from America with an enclosure, is quite sure I have embezzled her money, and she comes to the door three times a week with—"that little letther, your reverence? Sure, I don't begredge it to you. You're welcome to it over and over again; but whin 't is convanient, sure you won't see me wantin'? But sure, Mary will think it quare that I never wrote to thank her." I have given up protesting that I have received no letter lately from Mary; but the "purty boys" down at the forge have set the poor woman crazy. "Yerra, where 'ud he get de money for all them grand tings he has?" "Yerra, Kate, you'll never see dat post-office order." "Write to the Bishop, 'oman, and he'll see you rightified." And then, to crown all, comes the bill, just double what I expected. But it is wonderful how many extras there were, and how wages and the price of material went up. Alas! my little deposit of fifty pounds, which was to secure a few masses after my death, where is it? And poor old Hannah? Well, she'll have it all after my death, and that will make her doubly careful, and me—doubly miserable.

"Now," I said to Father Letheby, as he daintily balanced his spoon over his cup, and I leisurely stirred the sugar in,—well, no matter, "I don't like that coffee. It is not sociable. It makes you too cautious, while we, under the potent and expanding influence of native manufacture, are inclined to develop. Now, if you want to succeed in life, give up that Turkish drug and do what all your predecessors did."

"I'm too Irish for that," he said, rather paradoxically, I thought. "I'm afraid I should be talking about my ancestors, and asking some one to be good enough to tread on the tail of my coat."

He knew well that I did not wish to interfere with his tastes.

"Well, however, think kindly of us who cling to old traditions. We too had our day."

I was silent, thinking of old times.

"You never slept in a lime-kiln, I presume," said I, starting from a long reverie.

"God forbid," he said with a start.

"Well, I did. It happened in this way. It was nearly ten o'clock at night when I arrived at the door of the old pastor, to whose care I was committed on my first mission. I knocked, and knocked, and knocked. No answer. 'T was all the same. Father L—— had but one room and the kitchen; and that room was parlor, library, drawing-room, bedroom, and all. I dismissed the jarvey, left my portmanteau at the door, and wandered out into the night. I dared not rouse up the farmers around. It was the time of the White-boys, and I might get a charge of shot or a thrust of a pike for my pains. The night was cold and starry. And after wandering about for some time I came to a kiln. The men—the lime-burners—were not long gone, and the culm was still burning. I went in. The warmth was most grateful. I lay down quietly, took out my beads, and whilst saying the Rosary I fell fast asleep. I awoke to hear: 'Come, get out of this.' And, then, 'Good God! it is a priest.' Ah! well, how times have changed! But think kindly of us old men. We too have borne the burden and the heat,—the pondus diei et aestus."

A deep silence fell upon us both, broken only by the crackling of the turf and wood fire, I busy with the past, and he sunk in his own reflections. At length I said:—

"Would I trouble you to hand me down that 'Pars Verna' with the morocco cover? Thanks! This little time-stained book saw some curious scenes. It was my companion in many a rough adventure. In these old times it was quite a common experience for myself to leave home at six o'clock in the morning so as to be at the station-house by seven. By the way, you did murder the names of the mountain town-lands when calling the stations last Sunday. You must try and get the 'bloss' of the Irish on your tongue. Well, we usually heard confessions from seven to three o'clock in the afternoon, with just an interval for breakfast—"

"Pardon me, sir, but do you mean to say the people remained fasting and received Holy Communion at three o'clock?"

"Yes, my dear young man, that was an every-day experience. I remember a mission that was given in the town of N——, where I was curate in '54, the year the first great missions were given by Fathers Bernard and Petcherine. One evening, dead tired after a continuous day's work, I was crossing the church toward the sacristy, when a huge shaggy countryman stopped me. It was just half-past ten o'clock. 'I'm for Communion, your reverence,' said he. I was a little irritable and therefore a little sarcastic at the time. 'It is usually the habit of Catholics to receive Holy Communion fasting,' said I, never dreaming but that the man was after his supper. 'For the matter of that, your reverence,' said he, 'I could have received Communion any minit these last three days; for God is my witness, neither bite nor sup has crossed my lips, not even a spoonful of wather.' But to come back. Dear me, how easy it is to get me off the rail! After three o'clock I used to start out for my sick-calls; and, will you believe me, I was often out all night, going from one cabin to another, sometimes six or seven miles apart; and I often rode home in the morning when the larks were singing above the sod and the sun was high in the sky. Open that quarto."

He did. The leaves were as black as the cover, and clung together, tattered as they were.

"The rain and the wind of Ireland," I said. "It was no easy job to read Matins, with one hand clutching the reins and the pommel of the saddle, and the other holding that book in a mountain hurricane. But you are not a Manichaean, are you?"

He looked at me questioningly.

"I mean you don't see Mephistopheles rising in that gentle cloud of steam from my glass?"

"Oh no," he said; "you have your tastes, and I mine. Both are equally innocuous. But the fact is," he said, after a pause, "I cannot touch wine or spirits, because I want to work at night, and I must have all my faculties clear."

"Then you are working hard. God bless you! I saw your notes the other day. But don't forget your Greek. French is the language of diplomacy, Italian the language of love, German the language of philosophy, English the language of commerce, Latin the language of the Church, Greek the language of the scholar, and Hebrew the language of God. But I remember it gave a new zest to my studies long ago, when I read somewhere that our Divine Lord spoke Greek, at least amongst the learned, for Greek in the East was what Latin has been in the West."

"Yes, but 't is pitiful," he replied, with a blush; "I did get a gold medal from all Ireland in Greek; and yet, when I took up such an easy book as Homer the other day, why, 't was all Greek to me."

Here Hannah broke in, opening the door.

"Won't you take another cup of coffee, sir?" Awaiting the reply, Hannah poked up the fire and sent the blazes dancing merrily up the chimney. Then she raised the flame of the lamp, and did a great many other unnecessary things; but the kitchen is lonesome.

"Well, Hannah," said Father Letheby enthusiastically, "I will. You have made me a confirmed teetotaler. I would not even think of punch when your fragrant coffee is before me."

"Wisha, then, sir, but there's more life in the little drop of sperrits. However, your reverence is welcome to whatever you like in this house."

This is not the first time Hannah has assumed a tone of proprietorship in my little establishment. Well, no matter. It is our Irish communism,—very like that of the Apostles, too.

"You must not be disheartened about that," I said. "I read some time ago that no less a person than Lord Dufferin declared that, although he had taken a degree in Greek, he could not read a line of it in after years till he had learned it all over again, and in his own way."

"I am delighted to hear that," said Father Letheby.

"And when you do master your Greek," I said, "use your knowledge where it will profit you most."

He waited.

"On the Greek Fathers. Believe me, there is more poetry, science, philosophy, and theology there than in all modern literature, since Shakespeare. We don't know it. The Anglican divines do. I suspect that many a fairly sculptured sermon and learned treatise was cut from these quarries."

I suppose the poor fellow was weary from all the lecturing. Indeed, I think too his mind had rather a practical cast; for he began to ply me with questions about the parish that fairly astonished me.

"Did Pat Herlihy's big boy make his First Communion? What about establishing a First Confession class? He heard there was a night-dance at the cross-roads, half-ways to Moydore. Why don't the Moydore priests stop it? Did I know Winifred Lane, a semi-imbecile up in the mountains? He did not like one of the teachers. He thought him disrespectful. What was the cause of the coolness between the Learys and the Sheas? Was it the way that one of the Sheas, about sixty years ago, served on a jury, at which some disreputable Leary was convicted? What about a bridge over that mountain torrent at Slieveogue? He had written to the surveyor. Did I think the nuns in Galway would take a postulant? He heard that there was a sister home from New Zealand who was taking out young girls—"

"My dear young friend," I said, when I had tried to answer imperfectly this catechism, "I know you are a saint, and therefore endowed with the privilege of bilocation; but I did not know that you could dictate to six amanuenses at the same time, like Caesar or Suarez."

"Oh, by the way," he said, putting up his note-book, "I was near forgetting. With your permission, sir, I intend to put up a little crib at Christmas. Now, the roof is leaking badly over St. Joseph's Chapel. If you allow me, I shall put Jem Deady on the roof. He says you know him well, and can recommend him, and there are a few pounds in my hands from the Living Rosary."

It was true. I knew Jem Deady very well, as a confirmed dipsomaniac, who took the Total Abstinence Pledge for life regularly every three months. I also knew that that leak over St. Joseph's Chapel had been a steady source of income to Jem for the last ten years. Somehow it was an incurable malady, a kind of stone and mortar scrofula that was always breaking out, and ever resisting the science of this amiable physician. Sometimes it was "ground-damp," sometimes the "weeping wall"; and there were dread dissertations on barge courses and string courses, but there the evil was, ugly and ineradicable.

"I dare say, Jem told you that I had been putting cobblers from the village every winter for the last ten years on that roof and that he alone possesses the secret that will make that wall a 'thing of beauty and a joy forever'?"

"Well, indeed, he said something of the kind. But I have taken a fancy to the fellow. He sings like an angel, and since the Concert he entertains me every night with a variety of melodies, amongst which I think 'Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still' is his masterpiece."

"He does not sing 'Two Lovely Black Eyes'?" I asked.

"No," said Father Letheby, seriously.

"I think his wife sings that," I said, as Father Letheby rose to go.

"By the way," I said, as I helped him on with his great coat in the hall, for he is one for whom I would make any sacrifice, "how have you acquired such a minute knowledge of my parishioners in such a short time?"

"Well," said he, tying a silk handkerchief around his neck, "I was once at a military review in England, having been invited by some Catholic officers. I stood rather near the Duke of Cambridge. And this struck me. The Duke called out, 'Who commands that company?' 'I, sir.' 'What is the name of the third man on the right? Married or single? Term of service? Character? Trade?' And I was utterly amazed at the accurate information of the officers. Now, I often thought, if our great Commander-in-Chief questioned us in that manner, could we reply with the same precision? And I determined to know, as soon as possible, the name, history, and position of every man, woman, and child in this parish."

"And you have succeeded," I said admiringly. "You know them better than I, who have spent thirty years amongst them. But"—I could not resist the temptation of a little lecture—"if you are asked, accept no responsibility in money matters; and if two cocks are fighting down the street, and consequently diplomatic courtesies are suspended between the neighbors, I would not, if I were you, trouble much to ascertain which of the belligerents had ethical and moral right on his side; and if Mrs. Gallagher, by pure accident, should happen to be throwing out a pail of particularly dirty water just at the psychological moment when Mrs. Casey is passing her door; and if the tailor-made gown of the latter is thereby desecrated, and you see a sudden eclipse of the sun, and hear the rumble of distant thunder, don't throw aside your AEschylus to see the 'Furies'; and if Mrs. Deady—"

"Thank you! thank you, Father," he said, abruptly, "never fear. 'T will be all right!"

I closed the door on his fine, manly figure, and went back to my arm-chair, murmuring:—

"[Greek: Pathemata—mathemata]. So shall it be to the end, O Father of history!"



CHAPTER XI

BESIDE THE SINGING RIVER

Father Letheby was coming home a few nights ago, a little after twelve o'clock, from a hurried sick-call, and he came down by the cliffs; for, as he said, he likes to see the waters when the Almighty flings his net over their depths, and then every sea-hillock is a star, and there is a moon in every hollow of the waves. As he skirted along the cliff that frowns down into the valleys of the sea on the one hand, and the valleys of the firs and poplars on the other, he thought he heard some voices deep down in the shadows, and he listened. Very soon the harsh rasp of a command came to his ears, and he heard: "'Shun! 'verse arms," etc. He listened very attentively, and the tramp of armed men echoed down the darkness; and he thought he saw the glint of steel here and there where the moonbeams struck the trees.

"It was a horrible revelation," he said, "that here in this quiet place we were nursing revolution, and had some secret society in full swing amongst us. But then, as the little bit of history brought up the past, I felt the tide of feeling sweeping through me, and all the dread enthusiasm of the race woke within me:—

'There beside the singing river That dark mass of men are seen, Far above their shining weapons Hung their own immortal green!'

But this is a bad business, sir, for soul and body. What's to be done?"

"A bad business, indeed," I echoed. "But worse for soul than body. These poor fellows will amuse themselves playing at soldiers, and probably catching pneumonia; and there 't will end. You didn't see any policemen about?"

"No. They could be hiding unknown to me."

"Depend upon it, they were interested spectators of the midnight evolutions. I know there are some fellows in the village in receipt of secret service money, and all these poor boys' names are in the Castle archives. But what is worse, this means anti-clericalism, and consequently abstention from Sacraments, and a long train of evils besides. It must be handled gently."

"You don't mean to say, sir," he replied, "that that Continental poison has eaten its way in Ireland?"

"Not to a large extent; but it is there. There is no use in burying our heads in the sands and pretending not to see. But we must act judiciously. A good surgeon never acts hastily,—never hurries over an operation. Lente,—lente."

I saw a smile faintly rippling around the corners of his mouth. But I was afraid he might rush matters here, and it would be dangerous. But where's the use? He understood but one way of acting,—to grapple with an abuse and strangle it. "You drop stones," he used to say, "and they turn up armed men."

How he learned their place of meeting I don't know. But Sunday afternoon was a favorite time for the rebels; and the coursing match on the black hills and the rabbit hunt in the plantations were only preliminaries to more important and secret work. Whether by accident or design, Father Letheby stumbled on such a meeting about four o'clock one Sunday afternoon. A high ditch and a strong palisade of fir trees hid him from sight, and he was able to hear a good deal, and had no scruple in playing the listener. This is what he heard. The village tailor, lame in one leg, and familiarly known as "Hop-and-go-one," was the orator:—

"Fellow countrymen, de time for action has come. From ind to ind of the land, the downtrodden serfs of Ireland are rising in their millions. Too long have dey been juped by false pretences; too long have the hirelings of England chated and decaved them. We know now what a shimmera,[2] what a fraud, was Home Rule. Our counthry has been dragged at the tail of English parties, who were purshuing their own interests. But 't is all past. No more constitutional agitation, no more paceful struggle. Lead will do what fine speeches didn't. And if the black militia, wid dere ordhers from Rome, attimpt this time to interfere, we know what answer to give dem. De West's awake, and 't isn't priests will set us to sleep agin—"

At this juncture the orator was caught by the nape of the neck, and lifted bodily off the turf ditch, which was his forum. When he looked around, and saw who was his captor, he shrieked for mercy; and Father Letheby, dropping him, as one would drop a rat, he scurried off as fast as his lame leg would permit, whilst the priest, turning round to the stupefied boys, warned them of their folly and madness:—

"God knows, boys," he said, "I pity you. You are bent on a desperate and foolish course, the end of which no man can foresee. I know it is useless to reason with you on the score of danger; but I warn you that you are violating the laws of God and the Church, and that no blessing comes from such action. And yet," he continued, placing his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat, and drawing out a blue official paper, "this may convince you of your folly; at least, it may convince you of the fact that there is a traitor and informer in your midst. Who he is I leave yourselves to conjecture!"

He read out slowly the name of every young man that had been sworn in that secret society in the parish. The young men listened sullenly, and swore angrily between their teeth. But they could not deny their betrayal. They were vexed, humbled, disgraced; but they had to make some defence.



"The priests are always agin the people," said one keen-looking fellow, who had been abroad.

"That's an utter falsehood," said Father Letheby, "and you know it. You know that priests and people for seven hundred years have fought side by side the battle of Ireland's freedom from civil and religious disabilities. I heard your own father say how well he remembered the time when the friar stole into the farmyard at night, disguised as a pedlar, and he showed me the cavern down there by the sea-shore where Mass was said, and the fishermen heard it, as they pretended to haul in their nets."

"Thrue enough for you, your reverence," said a few others; "'t is what our fathers, and our fathers' fathers, have tould us."

"And now," continued Father Letheby, "look at the consequences of your present folly. Possible imprisonment in the dungeons of Portland and Dartmoor; exile to America, enforced by the threats of prosecution; and the sense of hostility to the Church, for you know you are breaking the laws. You dare not go to confession, for you cannot receive absolution; you are a constant terror to your mothers and sisters—and all at the dictation of a few scoundrels, who are receiving secret service money from the government, and a few newspapers that are run by Freemasons and Jews."

"Ah, now, your reverence," said one of the boys, a litterateur, "you are drawing the long bow. How could Irish newspapers be run by Freemasons and Jews?"

"Would you be surprised to hear," said Father Letheby, "that all the great Continental papers are the property of Freemasons and Jews; that all the rancor and bitterness stirred up against the Church for the past fifty years has been their work; that the anti-clerical feeling in Germany and in France has been carefully originated and fostered by them; that hatred of the Holy See is their motto; and that they have got into Ireland. You can see the cloven foot in the virulent anti-religious and anti-clerical articles that you read by the light of the fire at the forge; and yet, the very prayer-books you used at Mass to-day, and the beads that rolled through your mothers' fingers, have been manufactured by them. But the Irish are always fools,—never more so than now."

It was a magnificent leap of imagination on Father Letheby's part,—that which attributed to Jews and Freemasons the manufacture of beads and prayer-books on the one hand, and anti-clericalism on the other. Yet there was truth in what he had said. Indeed, there were many indications, as I could point out to him to his surprise, which proved that the anti-Catholic agencies here in Ireland were pursuing exactly the same tactics which had led to the extinguishing of the faith in parts of France and Italy,—namely, the dissemination of pornographic literature. They know well that there is but one thing that can destroy Irish faith, and that is the dissemination of ideas subversive of Catholic morality. Break down the earthworks that guard the purity of the nation, and the citadel of faith is taken. He was very silent all that evening, as I notice all Irish priests grow grave when this awful fact, which is under their very eyes, is made plain to them. It is so easy to look at things without seeing them. Then, as the full revelation of this new diablerie dawned upon him, he grew very angry. I think this is the most charming thing about my curate, that he is a thorough hater of everything cunning and concealed, and breaks out into noble philippics against whatever is foul and vicious. But I know he will be now on the alert; and God help any unfortunate that dares to peddle unwholesome wares under the necklaces and matches of his basket!

The tailor came duly to report Father Letheby for the drastic treatment he had received. He was rather too emphatic in demanding his immediate removal, and hinting at suspension. In lieu of that satisfaction, he would immediately institute proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench for assault and battery, and place the damages at several thousand pounds. I listened to him patiently, then hinted that an illiterate fellow like him should not be making treasonable speeches. He bridled up at the word "illiterate," and repudiated the vile insinuation. He could read and write as well as any priest in Connaught.

"But you cannot read your own writing?" I said, tentatively.

"Couldn't he? Try him!"

I thrust under his eyes his last letter to the sub-inspector of the district. I thought he would get a fit of apoplexy.

"Now, you scoundrel," I said, folding the letter and placing it beyond reach, "I forgive you all your deception and treason. What Father Letheby has got in store for you I cannot say. But I'll never forgive you, you most unscientific and unmathematical artist, for having given me so many shocking misfits lately, until I have looked like a scarecrow in a cornfield; even now you are smelling like a distillery. And tell me, you ruffian, what right had you to say at Mrs. Haley's public house that I was 'thauto—thauto—gogical' in my preaching? If I, with all the privileges of senility, chose to repeat myself, to drive the truths of Christianity into the numskulls of this pre-Adamite village, what is that to you,—you ninth part of a man? Was it not the immortal Homer that declared that every tailor—"

"For God's sake, spare me, your reverence, and I'll never do it again."

"Do you promise to cut my garments mathematically in the future?"

"I do, your reverence." He spoke as emphatically as if he were renewing his baptismal vows at a great mission.

"Do you promise to speak respectfully of me and my sermons for the future?"

"I do, your reverence."

"Now, go. Exi, erumpe, evade, or I'll turn you into a Sartor Resartus. I hand you over now, as the judge hands the culprit, to Father Letheby. Don't be too much surprised at eventualities. Do you know, did you ever hear, what the women of Marblehead did to a certain Floyd Ireson? Well, go ask Father Letheby. He'll tell you. And I shall be much surprised if the women of Kilronan are much behind their sisters of Marblehead in dealing with such a scoundrel as you."

* * * * *

I proposed this conundrum to Father Letheby that same evening: "Why is it considered a greater crime to denounce and correct an evil than to commit it?" He looked at me as if he doubted my sanity. I put it in a more euphemistic form: "Why is success always the test of merit? To come down from the abstract to the concrete, Why is a gigantic swindler a great financier, and a poor fellow that steals a loaf of bread a felon and a thief? Why is a colossal liar a great diplomatist, and a petty prevaricator a base and ignoble fraud? Why is Napoleon a hero, and that wretched tramp an ever to be dreaded murderer? Why is Bismarck called great, though he crushed the French into a compost of blood and rags, ground them by taxation into paupers, jested at dying children, and lied most foully, and his minor imitators are dubbed criminals and thieves? Look here, now, young man! If you, by a quiet, firm, indomitable determination succeed in crushing out and stamping out forever this secret society here, it will redound to your infinite credit in all men's eyes. But mark, if with all your energy and zeal you fail, or if you pass into a leaderette in some Freemason journal, and your zeal is held up as fanaticism and your energy as imprudence, the whole world will regard you as a hot-headed young fool, and will ask with rage and white lips, What is the Bishop doing in allowing these young men to take the reins into their own hands and drive the chariot of the sun? It is as great a crime to be a young man to-day as it was in the days of Pitt. Nothing can redeem the stigma and the shame but success. Of course, all this sounds very pagan, and I am not identifying myself with it. I believe with that dear barefooted philosopher, St. Francis, who is to me more than fifty Aristotles, as a Kempis is more than fifty Platos, that a man is just what he is in the eyes of God, and no more. But I am only submitting to you this speculative difficulty to keep your mind from growing fallow these winter evenings. And don't be in a hurry to answer it. I'll give you six months; and then you'll say, like the interlocutor in a Christy Minstrel entertainment: 'I give it up.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Chimera.]



CHAPTER XII

CHURCH IMPROVEMENTS

I am afraid Father Letheby is getting irritable. Perhaps he is studying too hard, and I don't spare him there, for he has the makings of a bishop in him; or perhaps it is that wretched coffee,—but he is losing that beautiful equanimity and enthusiasm which made him so attractive.

"I cannot understand these people," he said to me, soon after his adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence, meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the altar. That striking of the breast, that eager look on their faces, and that 'Cead mile failte, O Thierna!'[3] make me bless God for such a people; but then they appear to be waiting for the last words of the De Profundis, to jump up and run from the church as if in a panic. I can understand now how extemplo came to mean in a hurry, for if the roof were falling they could not rush from the building more promptly. Then an old woman will haggle over sixpence in buying a pair of chickens, and then come to you the following day and offer you in a stocking all she had saved in this world. I give them up. They are unintelligible."

From which I perceive that our good schoolmaster, experience, is trying the rod on this most hopeful and promising pupil.

"I hope you did not perceive any such abrupt and sudden contrasts in your protege, Jem Deady," I said. "He has realized your ideas of a nineteenth century Goban Saor."[4]

He laughed loudly.

"There's no use in talking," he said. I notice he is coming down gradually from his polished periods to our village colloquialisms.

"Thou shalt lower to their level." God forbid! 'Twas bad enough with myself; but with this bright, accomplished fellow, 't would be too bad. He then told me with delight and chagrin, rage and laughter, his experiences with Jem.

It would appear that he made a solemn contract with this architect to stop the leak and restore the wall in St. Joseph's Chapel for twenty-five shillings. "'Twas too little," said Jem, "but what can you do with a gintleman that doesn't know a trowel from a spade." All materials were to be found by the contractor.

On Monday afternoon there was a knock at Father Letheby's door, and Jem was announced.

"Well, Jem," said Father Letheby, cheerfully, "getting on with the job?"

"Yes, your reverence, getting on grand," said Jem. "But I come to you about the laddher."

"The-e ladder?" echoed Father Letheby.

"Yes, your reverence," echoed Jem confidentially, "the laddher to get up on the roof, you know."

"But I understood you to say that you were getting through with this little job."

"Oh, of course, your reverence, we're getting through the preliminaries; but I must get on the roof, you know."

"I presume so," said Father Letheby, a little nettled, "and why don't you go there?"

"Does your reverence take me for an aigle, and want me to fly?"

"Well, not exactly," said Father Letheby, with a slight touch of flattery and sarcasm, "I am more disposed to take you for a nightingale!"

"Well, then, your reverence," said Jem, melting under the happy allusion, "a gintleman of your grate expayrince in building should know that, of all things else, a laddher is the wan thing necessary."

"Then you expect me to construct a ladder for your convenience?"

"Oh, not at all, your reverence; but if you gave me a little note up to the 'Great House,' I'd have it down while you'd be saying 'trapsticks.'"

There were some reasons why it was not at all desirable that he should ask favors from the "Great House"; but there was no help, and Jem got the letter.

"Now, this is all you require," said Father Letheby, with determination.

"That is all," said Jem. "Do you think I'd be throubling your reverence every minit. Long life to your reverence. May you be spared long in the parish."

About four o'clock that afternoon, Father Letheby was startled by a sudden commotion in the village. All the dogs were barking, and there are as many dogs in Kilronan as in Constantinople, and they are just as vicious; all the women were at the doors, rubbing their hands in their aprons; and the village loafers were all turned towards where a solemn procession was moving through the street. First came a gang of youngsters, singing, "Sure, We're the Boys of Wexford," then a popular ditty; then came two laborers, dragging along a ladder with as much show of expended energy as if it were a piece of heavy ordnance; then the cart on which the ladder was placed; then two more laborers behind, making desperate efforts to second the arduous endeavors of their mates in front; then a squadron of bare-legged girls, trying to keep the hair out of their eyes; and finally, the captain of the expedition, Jem Deady, leisurely walking along, with his hands in his pockets, a wheaten straw in his mouth, whilst he looked from cabin to cabin to receive the admiration of the villagers. It was expressed in various ways:—

"Wisha, thin, Jem, 't is you're the divil painted."

"Where is he taking it?"

"To the chapel."

"Wisha, thin, I thought the priests had some sinse."

"Whisht, 'uman, he's come around the new cojutor and got a job."

"Th' ould job?"

"Th' ould job!"

"Wisha, God help his poor wife now. 'T is she'll suffer," etc.

The men made desperate efforts as they passed Father Letheby's windows. He looked on hopelessly, as you look at a charade of which you have not got the key.

At six o'clock there was a deputation at the door, consisting of four laborers and the owner of the cart.

"We come for our day's hire, your reverence," said the foreman, unabashed.

"Oh, indeed," said Father Letheby, "I am not aware that you are in my employment."

"We dhrew the laddher down from the Great House to the chapel; and I may tell your reverence 't was a tough job. I wouldn't do it again for five shillings."

"Nor I, ayther."

"Nor I, ayther."

"Nor I, ayther, begor."

"Well, look here," said Father Letheby, "I'm not going to submit to this infamous extortion. I didn't employ you, and I acknowledge no responsibility whatsoever."

"That manes you won't pay us, your reverence?" said the foreman, in a free translation.

"Precisely," said Father Letheby, closing the door abruptly.

He heard them murmuring and threatening outside, but took no notice of them. Later in the evening he took his usual stroll. He found these fellows loafing around the public house. They had been denouncing him vigorously, and occasionally a Parthian shaft came after him:—

"Begor, 't is quare, sure enough."

"Begor, we thought the priests couldn't do any wrong."

But when he turned the corner he met a good deal of sympathy:—

"Wisha, begor, 't is your reverence was wanted to tache these blackguards a lesson."

"Wisha, 't was God sent you," etc., etc.

Now, one shilling would have given these fellows lashings of porter, and secured their everlasting fealty and an unlimited amount of popularity. I told him so.

"Never," he said, drawing back his head, and with flashing eyes, "I shall never lend myself to so demoralizing a practice. We must get these people out of the mire."

The next day, he thought he was bound to see how Jem was progressing with his contract. He went down to the little church and passed into the sacristy, whence he had a clear view of the roof of St. Joseph's Chapel. Jem was there, leisurely doing nothing, and on the graveyard wall were eight men, young and old, surveying the work and offering sundry valuable suggestions. They took this shape:—

"Wisha, Jem, take the world aisy. You're killing yerself, man."

"What a pity he's lost his wice (voice); sure 't was he was able to rise a song."

"Dey say," interjected a young ragamuffin, "dat Fader Letheby is going to take Simon Barry into his new choir. Simon is a tinner, and Jem is only a bannitone."

"Hould your tongue, you spalpeen," said a grown man, "Jem can sing as well as twinty Simons, dat is if he could only wet his whistle."

"Thry dat grand song, Jem, ''T is Years Since Last We Met.'"

"No, no," said the chorus, "give us 'Larry McGee.'"

"Wisha, byes, wouldn't wan of ye run over to Mrs. Haley's for a pint. 'T is mighty dhry up here."

"Here ye are," said the chorus, chipping in and making up the requisite "tuppence." "Don't be long about it, ye young ruffian."

"But what about the pledge, Jem?" asked a conscientious spectator. "Shure your time isn't up yet."

"'T is up long ago," cried another. "'Twas three months yesterday since he took the pledge."

"Byes," said Jem, who was troubled at the possible scandal he was about to give, "I promised not to dhrink in a public house; and shure this isn't a public house, glory be to God!"

They took off their hats reverently; and then the pint came, was taken up the ladder with great care and solemnity, and a few minutes after, Father Letheby heard:—

"What is it going to be, byes? I've left me music on the pianney!"

"'Larry McGee!' 'Larry McGee!' No. No. 'T is Yares Since Last——.' No. No. 'The Byes of Wexford.'"

"Byes, I think the majority is in favor of 'Larry McGee.'—Here's to yer health!"

And then came floating from the roof in various quavers and semiquavers and grace-notes the following, which is all Father Letheby can remember.

"I—in the town of Kilkinny lived Larry McGee, Oh—oh the divil's own boy at divarshion was he; He—he had a donkey, a pig, but he hadn't a wife, His cabin was dreary, and wretched his life."

Then the notes came wavering and fitful, as the wind took them up, and carried them struggling over the moorland; and all that Father Letheby could hear was about a certain Miss Brady, who was reared up a lady, and who was requested to accept the name of Mrs. McGee. This suit must have been successful, because, as the wind lulled down, the words came clearly:—

"Sure the chickens were roasted,—the praties was biled, They were all in their jackets, for fear they'd be spiled; And the neighbors came flockin', for to fling up the stockin', And dance at the weddin' of Larry McGee."

It was interesting; but Father Letheby's temper was rising with the undulations of the song. He came out into the graveyard, and there was a stampede of the spectators. Jem was lifting the porter to his lips, and looked down calmly and philosophically at the young priest.