t that mane?"

"Ye live so much with it, Father."

"I'm lookin' at it and listenin' to it now, Frank O'Connell."

"Then it's a miracle has happened, Father."

"A miracle?"

"To see and hear one's self at the same time is indade a miracle, yer
riverence."

Father Cahill tightened his grasp on his blackthorn stick, and shaking
it in the other's face, said:

"Don't provoke the Man of God!"

"Not for the wurrld," replied the other meekly, "bein' mesef a Child of
Satan."

"And that's what ye are. And ye'd have others like yerself. But ye
won't while I've a tongue in me head and a sthrong stick in me hand."

O'Connell looked at him with a mischievous twinkle in his blue-grey
eyes:

"Yer eloquence seems to nade somethin' to back it up, I'm thinkin'."

Father Cahill breathed hard. He was a splendid type of the Irish
Parish-Priest of the old school. Gifted with a vivid power of eloquence
as a preacher, and a heart as tender as a woman's toward the poor and
the wretched, he had been for many years idolised by the whole
community of the village of M--in County Clare. But of late there was a
growing feeling of discontent among the younger generation. They lacked
the respect their elders so willingly gave. They asked questions
instead of answering them. They began to throw themselves, against
Father Cahill's express wishes and commands, into the fight for Home
Rule under the masterly statesmanship of Charles Stuart Parnell.
Already more than one prominent speaker had come into the little
village and sown the seeds of temporal and spiritual unrest. Father
Cahill opposed these men to the utmost of his power. He saw, as so many
far-sighted priests did, the legacy of bloodshed and desolation that
would follow any direct action by the Irish against the British
Government. Though the blood of the patriot beat in Father Cahill's
veins, the well-being of the people who had grown up with him was near
to his heart. He was their Priest and he could not bear to think of men
he had known as children being beaten and maimed by constabulary, and
sent to prison afterwards, in the, apparently, vain fight for
self-government.

To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most
notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the
little village.

O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest
regrets. He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had taken
care of the boy as