g deceived and
imposed on the public, inveighing, at the same time, against the system
of persecution and underhand proselytism that prevailed, and which
produced the death of Eugene O'Clery.

"Your ministers think they have great merit," said the Irish cotters,
whose names were Lee and Twohy, "when they succeed in causing a lax
Catholic to trample on every precept of his religion and to perjure
himself; but as God is just, and as those who counsel to evil partake of
its guilt, and will have to suffer its punishment, so will all the sins
that your minister's cruel advice led us to commit be laid to his charge
before the just tribunal of Christ."

After this speech, the two Irish Catholic cotters retired from the
meeting, and ever since these two men have proved, by their repentance,
zeal, humility, and perseverance, that, though they fell from the
external practice of their faith, they did so influenced by the evil
advice and misrepresentations of persons who took advantage of their
inexperience and poverty to lead them astray. They were gradually,
however, becoming reconciled to the hard life of hypocrisy and sin which
they were induced to enter on, and might have forever continued in the
reprobate path on which, in an evil hour, they walked, had not the cruel
martyrdom of the holy orphan child aroused them from their slumbers.
Thus, as of old, does the "blood of martyrs become the seed of new
Christians;" and thus is Erin, even in America, still true to her
Heaven-appointed destiny--which is, that of being a missionary and a
martyr in the new world as well as in the old.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Considerate, et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus."
"Attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow."

LAM. JER.

There was a complete suspension of the ordinary occupations on the farm
of Gulvert for near ten days, owing to the trials with which his family
was visited. The wife was still confined to her room, and continually
threatening her husband with the divorce, who, on his part, had no heart
to conduct the necessary work of his farm, he felt so dispirited at the
loss of his team and of the money out of which "his converts" had
tricked him. Add to this that there were very ugly rumors going the
round of the neighborhood in reference to the ill usage the little Irish
orphan met with. While he was living and in suffering, there was nobody
to sympathize with him or to say a word in his favor; but