o
O'Gorman than he deserved. Just look at your own case. The stories
that have come back to Ireland, O'Ruddy, just made me shiver. I heard
that you were fighting and brawling through England, ready to run
through any man that looked cross-eyed at you. They said that you had
taken up with a highwayman; that you spent your nights in drink and
breathing out smoke; and here I find you, a proper young man, doing
credit to your country, meeting you, not in a tavern, but on your
knees with bowed head in the chapel of Saint Patrick, giving the lie
to the slanderer's tongue."

The good old man stopped in our walk, and with tears in his eyes shook
hands with me again, and I had not the heart to tell him the truth.

"Ah well," I said, "Father Donovan, I suppose nobody, except yourself,
is quite as good as he thinks, and nobody, including myself, is as bad
as he appears to be. And now, Father Donovan, where are you stopping,
and how long will you be in London?"

"I am stopping with an old college friend, who is a priest in the
church where I found you. I expect to leave in a few days' time and
journey down to the seaport of Rye, where I am to take ship that will
land me either in Dunkirk or in Calais. From there I am to make my way
to Rome as best I can."

"And are you travelling alone?"

"I am that, although, by the blessing of God, I have made many friends
on the journey, and every one I met has been good to me."

"Ah, Father Donovan, you couldn't meet a bad man if you travelled the
world over. Sure there's some that carry such an air of blessedness
with them that every one they meet must, for very shame, show the best
of his character. With me it's different, for it seems that where
there's contention I am in the middle of it, though, God knows, I'm a
man of peace, as my father was before me."

"Well," said Father Donovan slowly, but with a sweet smile on his lip,
"I suppose the O'Ruddys were always men of peace, for I've known them
before now to fight hard enough to get it."

The good father spoke a little doubtfully, as if he were not quite
approving of our family methods, but he was a kindly man who always
took the most lenient view of things. He walked far with me, and then
I turned and escorted him to the place where he resided, and, bidding
good-bye, got a promise from him that he would come to the "Pig and
Turnip" a day later and have a bite and sup with me, for I thought
with the assistance of the landlord I co