Our Little Irish Cousin Part 4

He began to study and prepare himself for teaching. At last he was made a bishop.

After many years, he was able to go back to Ireland. It was what he had long wished to do.

It was the eve of Easter Sunday when he lighted that great fire on the hilltop and surprised the king by his daring.

"I will send for the man who kindled that fire. Let him come before me at once," commanded the king.

Patrick was brought in haste, but he was not frightened in the least.

When the king and the princes, the n.o.bles and the Druid priests were gathered together, he told them he had come to Erin to put out the fires of the Druids. He wished to stop the making of the pagan sacrifices in which the people then believed. He had brought something better in their place. It was the Christian religion.

What do you suppose the king replied?

He was very angry, of course. But still he asked Patrick to meet the wise men of the country the next day and talk the matter over. Then he could explain his belief to them.

On the next day he did meet them. He talked so well and so wisely that many of the listeners thought he knew a great deal more than they did.

They became Christians then and there.

The king then gave Patrick the right to preach all over Ireland. As he went from place to place, he spoke so well that all those who listened to him felt his great power.

In a short time the whole of the people became Christians, and the strange wors.h.i.+p of the Druids came to an end.

Father Tom told Norah and her sister many wonderful stories of the life of St. Patrick. He told of a spring of water he had visited. This spring worked miracles.

It happened that St. Patrick and St. Bridget were one day taking a walk.

She said she was thirsty. St. Patrick struck the ground with his staff.

Water instantly began to bubble up through the earth, and a spring has been there ever since.

Father Tom went on to tell of strange wriggling things called snakes. He had seen them in other countries. They were something like big worms, and were of different colours. The bite of some of them was poisonous.

"But we have none of them in our own beautiful Ireland," he said. "You may thank the blessed St. Patrick for sending them out of this country."

Norah and Katie both s.h.i.+vered when they thought of the snakes. How good St. Patrick was to drive the horrid creatures out of Ireland!

"There is a grand church in the city of Dublin called St. Patrick's Cathedral. When you grow up, Norah, you must surely visit it," said the kind priest, as he finished his story-telling. "It stands on the very spot where St. Patrick himself once built a church. It is a fine building, and its spire reaches higher up toward heaven than anything you have ever seen made by men.

"But, my dear little children, your mother has prepared me a nice luncheon. I must eat it, and then visit poor Widow McGee, who is very ill."

A half-hour afterward, Father Tom had left the little home, and Mrs.

O'Neil was once more hard at work over her wash-tub. Norah was out in the yard amusing baby Patsy.

"Mother, mother," she called, "Mrs. Maloney is on her way here. She has just stopped at Mrs. Flynn's."

"Come in and get some petaties ready for her, Norah. I don't want to stop again in my work." (Mrs. O'Neil p.r.o.nounced it "wurruk.")

Mrs. Maloney lived in a lonely cabin about two miles away. You would hardly believe it, but Norah's home was almost a palace beside Mrs.

Maloney's.

There was one little window, as she would have called it. It was really only a hole in the wall. When heavy rains fell, the old woman stuffed it with marsh-gra.s.s. The thatched roof had fallen in at one end of the cabin. The furniture was a chair and a rough bedstead.

Poor old Mrs. Maloney! Once she had a strong husband and eight happy children, but, one by one, they had died, and now she was old and feeble, and had no one in the world to look after her.

Is it any wonder that the generous people whom she visited always had something to give and a kind word to speak to her?

Every few days, she went from house to house, holding out her ap.r.o.n as she stood in the doorway. She did not need to say a word. One kind woman would give her a bit of tea, another a loaf of bread, a third a cabbage, and a fourth a little b.u.t.ter.

In this way she was kept from starving, or from going to the workhouse, which she dreaded nearly as much.

As Norah dropped the potatoes into her ap.r.o.n, the old woman blessed her heartily. As she turned to leave, Mrs. O'Neil called after her to ask how she got along in yesterday's bad storm.

"Sure and I was that feared I dared not stay in the cabin. It was so bad I thought it would fall down on me shoulders. So I wint out and sat on the turf behind it. I was wet indade when the storm was over."

"Too bad, too bad," said Mrs. O'Neil, in a voice of pity. "We must see what can be done for you."

She did not forget. That very night she asked her husband if he could not find time to mend the old woman's hut and make it safe to live in.

He promised her that as soon as the potatoes were hoed he would get his friend Mickey Flynn to help him and they would fix it all right.

"Ah! Tim, Tim," said his wife, with her eyes full of tears, "of all the eight children Mrs. Maloney has lost, there is none she grieves over like her boy John, that went to Ameriky and was never heard of again.

"Maybe he lost his life on the way there. Maybe he died all alone in that far-away land, with no kind friends near him. No one but G.o.d knows."

Mrs. O'Neil crossed herself as she went on, "Think of our own dear girl in Ameriky, and what might happen to her!"

CHAPTER IV.

DANIEL O'CONNELL

"O Paddy, dear, and did you hear The news that's going round?

The shamrock is forbid by law To grow on Irish ground."

NORAH was sitting by her father's side as the family were gathered around the fireplace one chilly evening. She was singing that song they loved so well, "The Wearing of the Green."

"I picked some shamrock leaves this morning, and I put them in the big book to press. Can they go in the next letter to Maggie, mother?" asked the little girl, as she finished singing.

She jumped down from her seat and went to a shelf, from which she took the treasure of the family. It was the only book they owned besides their prayer-books.

It told the story of a man loved by every child of Erin,--the story of Daniel O'Connell.

Opening the leaves carefully, Norah took out a spray of tiny leaves.

They looked very much like the white clover which is so common in the fields of America. It was a cl.u.s.ter of shamrock leaves, the emblem of Ireland.

"Yes, it shall go to Maggie without fail," said Norah's mother. "It will make her heart glad to see it. The fields behind our cabin will come to her mind, and the goat she loved so well, feeding there. Oh, but she has niver seen Patsy yet!"

"Father, please tell us the story of that great man," said Norah. "I am never tired of hearing it."