ding on the edge of a lake, "camisiam
suam lavantem"--washing her chemise, poor simple soul. St Molua saw a
monster, of the size of a large boat, in pursuit of two boys swimming
unconscious of danger in a lake in the county of Monaghan. He showed
good worldly sense and presence of mind on the occasion; for, instead of
alarming them with an announcement of their perilous condition, he
called out to them to try a race and see which would reach the bank
first. The beast, balked of his prey, took in good part an admonition by
the saint, and returned no more to frighten boys.

From fishes and aquatic monsters the law of association naturally leads
us to the waters themselves. There are throughout the United Kingdom
multitudes of wells, still bearing the names of the saints to whom they
were dedicated. The legends of miracles performed by their waters,
through the intercession of their special saints, are countless. It is,
perhaps, because cures effected by the use of waters may be accounted
for otherwise than by supernatural intervention, that modern writers of
the old faith speak with less reserve of the miracles at fountains than
of the others they have to record, and even bring them down to modern
times. Many of them may be found recorded in his usual slipshod manner
in the amiable pages of Butler--as, for instance, in the life of St
Winfrid (November 3), where we are told how "Roger Whetstone, a Quaker,
near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell, was cured of an inveterate
lameness and palsy by which he was converted to the Catholic faith."
Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities and advanced opinions,
are still haunted by people who believe them to be endowed with
supernatural healing virtues. It is in Romish Ireland, of course, that
this belief has its most legitimate seat; but even in the most
orthodoxly-Presbyterian districts of Scotland, a lingering dubious trust
in the healing virtues of sanctified fountains has given much perplexity
to the clergy.

Some of these fountains are in caverns, and if in any one of these the
well falls into a rude-hewn basin like a font, we may be sure that a
hermit frequented the cave, and that it was the place of worship of
early converts. Such a cave was the hiding-place, after the '45, of the
worthy single-minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the Baron of
Bradwardine. It is entered by a small orifice like a fox's hole, in the
face of the rugged cliffs which front the Ger