l, then, upon the village, and great wrath
smouldered in many breasts; and, as surely as if they had lighted
beacon-fires, or sent mounted couriers far and wide, the evil news was
flashed into the remotest mountain nooks and down to the hermitages of
the fishermen. And there was wrath, feeble and impotent, for here was
the law, and behind the law was the omnipotence of England.

What Father Letheby endured that evening can only be conjectured; but I
sent word to Lizzie that he was to come up to my house absolutely and
remain there until the hateful visitors had departed. This was sooner
than we anticipated. Meanwhile, a few rather touching and characteristic
scenes occurred. When the exact nature of Father Letheby's trouble
became known, the popular indignation against the rebellious factory
girls became so accentuated that they had to fly from the parish, and
they finally made their way, as they had promised, to America. Their
chief opponents now were the very persons that had hooted their
substitutes through the village, and helped to close the factory
finally. And two days after the bailiffs had appeared, an old woman,
who had been bed-ridden for years with rheumatism, managed to come down
into the village, having got a "lift" from a neighbor, and she crept
from the cart to my door. Father Letheby was absent; he hid himself in
the mountains or in the sea-caves these dread days, never appearing in
the village but to celebrate his morning Mass, snatch a hasty breakfast,
and return late at night, when the shadows had fallen. Well, Ellen
Cassidy made her way with some difficulty into my little parlor, where,
after I had recovered from my fright at the apparition, I ventured to
address her:--

"Why, Nell, you don't mean to say that this is yourself?"

"Faith it is, your reverence, my own poor ould bones. I just kem down
from my cabin at Maelrone."

"Well, Nell, wonders will never cease. I thought you would never leave
that cabin until you left it feet foremost."

"Wisha, thin, your reverence, naither did I; but God give me the strinth
to come down on this sorrowful journey."

"And what is it all about, Nell? Sure, you ought to be glad that the
Lord gave you the use of your limbs again."

"Wisha, thin, your reverence, sure, 't is I'm wishing that I was in my
sroud[8] in the cowld clay, before I saw this sorrowful day. Me poor
gintleman! me poor gintleman! To think of all his throuble, and no wan
to help him!"

"Y