medals and scapulars might
induce his workmen to do some overtime. He went to Dublin to talk over
this matter with some pious Catholics, and an old lady wrote a cheque
for fifty pounds, two or three others subscribed smaller sums, and the
plasterers were busy all next week. But these subscriptions did not go
nearly as far towards completing the work as he had expected. The
architect had led him astray, and he looked around the vast barn that
he had built and despaired. It seemed to him it would never be finished
in his lifetime. A few weeks after he was again running short of money,
and he was speaking to his workmen one Saturday afternoon, telling them
how they could obtain a plenary indulgence by subscribing so much
towards the building of the church, and by going to Confession and
Communion on the first Sunday of the month, and if they could not
afford the money they could give their work. He was telling them how
much could be done if every workman were to do each day an hour of
overtime, when Biddy suddenly appeared, and, standing in front of the
men, she raised up her hands and said they should not pass her until
they had pledged themselves to come to work on Monday.

"But haven't we got our wives and little ones, and haven't we to think
of them?" said a workman.

"Ah, one can live on very little when one is doing the work of God,"
said Biddy.

The man called her a vain old woman, who was starving herself so that
she might put up a window, and they pushed her aside and went away,
saying they had to think of their wives and children.

The priest turned upon her angrily and asked her what she meant by
interfering between him and his workmen.

"Now, don't be angry with me, your reverence. I will say a prayer, and
you will say a word or two in your sermon to-morrow."

And he spoke in his sermon of the disgrace it would be to Kilmore if
the church remained unfinished. The news would go over to America, and
what priest would be ever able to get money there again to build a
church?

"Do you think a priest likes to go about the barrooms asking for
dollars and half-dollars? Would you make his task more unpleasant? If I
have to go to America again, what answer shall I make if they say to
me: 'Well, didn't your workmen leave you at Kilmore? They don't want
churches at Kilmore. Why should we give you money for a church?'"

There was a great deal of talking that night in Michael Dunne's, and
they were all of one mind