vered grave,
and charitably explained where a certain cross belonged which had been
set by mistake over him. The saint was captured once, and was exchanged
for a kettle, which thenceforth froze water over the fire instead of
boiling it, until the saint was sent back and the kettle returned.
Ruain, son of Cucnamha, Amhalgaidh's charioteer, was blind. He went in
haste to meet Saint Patrick, to be healed. Mignag laughed at him. "My
troth," said Patrick, "it would be fit that you were the blind one." The
blind man was healed and the seeing one was made blind; Roi-Ruain is the
name of the place where this was done. Patrick's charioteer was looking
for his horses in the dark, and could not find them; Patrick lifted up
his hand; his five fingers illuminated the place like five torches, and
the horses were found.

You see that one has a good deal to go through who undertakes to prepare
a life of Saint Patrick.

But our thoughts have wandered from Dr. Parsons. He has gathered the
books before him with great pains, from public and private libraries,
and he religiously meant to make an exhaustive study of them all; but
sermons and parish calls and funerals, and that little affair of
Mrs. Samuel Nute, have forced him, by a process of which we all know
something, to forego his projected subsoil ploughing and make such hasty
preparation as he can.

He has read the Confession and the Epistle to Coroticus, and he has
glanced over the "Life and Legends," reading in a cursory way of the
leper's miraculous voyage; of the fantastic snow; of the tombstone that
sailed the seas; of the two trout that Patrick left to live forever in a
well,--

"The two inseparable trout,
Which would advance against perpetual streams,
Without obligation, without transgression--
Angels will be along with them in it."

And being very fond of pure water himself, the Doctor is touched by
Patrick's lament when far away from the well Uaran-gar:--

"Uaran-gar, Uaran-gar!
O well, which I have loved, which loved me!
Alas! my cry, O my dear God,
That my drink is not from the pure well of Uaran-gar!"

But finally he has settled down, as most casual students will, to the
sincere and charming little sketch by William Bullen Morris,--"Saint
Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland." He is reading it now by the east
window, holding the book at arm's-length, as is his wont.

The theme is new to him. There opens up a fresh and interest