s voice:--

"I have been a hard man," he said, "but the events of this morning have
quite upset me. I didn't know that my child was so worshipped by the
people, and it has touched me deeply. You know, brought up in the school
where I graduated, I have never been able to shake off a feeling of
contempt for these poor, uneducated serfs; and their little cunning ways
and want of manliness have always disgusted me. I am beginning to see
that I have been wrong. And then I have been a bad Catholic. Ormsby,
lately an unbeliever, has shown me this, not by his words, for he is a
thorough gentleman, but by his quiet example. You know I did not care
one brass pin whether he was Turk, Jew, or atheist, so long as he
married Bittra. Now I see that the Church is right, and that her
espousal would have been incomplete if she had not married a Catholic,
and a true one. All this has disturbed me, and I intend to turn over a
new leaf. I am running into years; and although I have, probably, thirty
years of life before me, I must brush up as if the end were near. I am
awfully sorry I was not at the rails with Bittra and Ormsby this
morning; but we shall all be together at Holy Communion the Sunday after
they return from the Continent. By Jove! there goes the Angelus; and
twelve is the hour to start the boat!"

He took off his hat, and we said the _Angelus_ in silence together. I
noticed the silver gathering over his ears, and the black hair was
visibly thinning on the top. I watched him keenly for those few seconds.
I did not know that those musical strains of the midday Angelus were his
death-knell--the ringing up of the great stage-manager, Death, for his
_volte subito_--his leap through the ring to eternity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: In many places in Ireland the priest places the broad ends
of the stole on the heads of the newly married couple.]

CHAPTER XXVII

THE "STAR OF THE SEA"

There was a vast crowd assembled down where the extemporized pier jutted
into the creek, and where the new fishing-boat, perfect in all her
equipments, lolled and rolled on the heaving of the tide. Her high mast
made an arc of a circle in the warm June air, as the soft, round
wavelets lifted her; and many was the comment made on her by those whose
eyes had never rested but on the tarred canvas of the coracle.

"She has a list to port!" said an old mariner, critically.

"Where's yer eyes, Jur?" cried another. "Don't ye see she lanes to
sta