depressed in spirit, my son; something is weighing on your
heart!"

I looked up at him, and, guided possibly by my suspicion of his real
character, I saw, or thought I saw, a twinkling glitter of his dark eye,
as though he was approaching the theme on which he was bent.

"Yes, Father," replied I, with a voice of well-feigned emotion, "my
heart is indeed heavy; but"--here I assumed a more daring tone--"I must
not despond, for all that!"

I walked away as I spoke, and, retiring, sat down near the wheel, as
if to meditate. I judged that the Padre would soon follow me; nor was I
wrong: I was not many minutes seated ere he stood at my side.

"I see," said he, in a mild voice,--"I see, from the respect of your
manner, that you are one of our own people,--a good son of the Church.
What is your native country?"

"Ireland, Father," said I, with a sigh.

"A blessed land indeed!" said he, benignly; "happy in its peaceful
inhabitants,--simple-minded and industrious!"

I assented, like a good patriot, but not without misgivings that he
might have been just as happy in another selection of our good gifts.

"I have known many of your countrymen," resumed he, "and they all
impressed me with the same esteem. All alike frugal, temperate, and
tranquilly disposed."

"Just so, sir; and the cruelty is, nobody gives them credit for it!"

"Ah, my son, there you are in error. The Old World may be, and indeed I
have heard that it is, ungenerous; but its prejudices cannot cross the
ocean. Here we estimate men, not by _our_ prejudices, but by _their_
merits. Here we recognize the Irishman as Nature has made him,--docile,
confiding, and single-hearted; slow to anger, and ever ready to control
his passions!"

"That's exactly his portrait, Father!" said I, enthusiastically.
"Without a double of any kind,--a creature that does not know a wile or
a stratagem!"

The priest seemed so captivated by my patriotism and my generous warmth
that he sat down beside me, and we continued to make Ireland still our
theme, each vying with the other who could say most in praise of that
country.

It was at the close of a somewhat long disquisition upon the comparative
merits of Ireland and the Garden of Eden,--in which, I am bound to say,
the balance inclined to the former,--that the Padre, as if struck by a
sudden thought, remarked,--

"You are the very first of your nation I ever met in a frame of mind
disposed to melancholy! I have just been runnin