Hyacinth

erience of missionary societies that, the more remote the field of actual work, the easier it is to keep alive the interest of subscribers. The mission to Roman Catholics, therefore, commenced in

led to overflowing. In the matter of education circumstances favoured the new reformation. The leonine John McHale, the Papal Archbishop of Tuam, pursued a policy which drove the children of his flock into the mission schools. The only other kind of education available was that which some humorous English statesman had called 'national,' and it did not seem to the Archbishop desirable that an Irish boy should be beaten for speaking his own language, or rewarded for calling himself 'a happy English child.' He refused to allow the building of national schools in his diocese, and thus left the cleverer

that followed it left him fatherless and brotherless. The emigration schemes robbed him and his mother of their surviving relations. The mission school and the missionary's charity effected the half conversion of the mother and a whole-hearted acceptance of the new faith on the part of ?neas. Unlike most of his fellows in th

illuminated texts. A salary, not princely but sufficient, was voted to Mr. Conneally, and he was given authority over a Scripture-reader and a schoolmaster. The whole group of mission buildings-the rectory, the church, and the school-stood, like types of the uncompromising spirit of Protestantism, upon the bare hillside, swept by every storm, battered by the Atlantic spray. Below them Carrowkeel, the village, cowered in such shelter as the sandhills afforded. Eastward lonely cottages, faintly smoking dots in the landscape, straggled away to the rugged bases of the mountains. The Rev. ?neas Conneally entered upon his mission enthusiastically, and the London committee awaited results. There were scarcely any results, certainly none that could be considered satisfactory. The day for making conversions was past, and the tide had set decisively against the new reformation. A national school, started by a clearsighted priest, in spite of his Archbishop, left the mission school almost

sternness of the reformer died in him, and his neighbours, who never could comprehend his religion, came to understa

s recognition of the value of a zeal which had not flagged. Failing the attainment of greatness, the next best thing is to dedicate a new life to a patron saint who has won the reward of those who endure to the end. For two years more life in the glebe house was rapturously happy. Such bliss has in it, no doubt, an element of sin, and it is not good that it should e

ttering to himself, among the sandhills and along the beach. After a while the power of thought and a sense of the outward things of life returned to him. He found that an aged crone from the village had establi

Moran, the priest who had started the national school, down to old Shamus, the crippled singer of interminable Irish songs and teller of heroic legends of the past. It was when he heard the boy repeat a story of F

rayer-Book Hyacinth was taught to read no English books. He learned Latin after a fashion, not with nice attention

ishing-boats. He galvanized the people into unwonted activity, and, though sceptical of good results, they earned a weekly wage by building it. Boats came, great able boats, which fought the Atlantic, and the old curraghs were left to blister in the sun far up on the beach. Instructors from the Isle of Man taught new ways of catching mackerel. Green patches between the cottages and the sea, once the playground of pigs an

The price of lobsters rose to the unprecedented figure of four shillings a doz

nd each man at fixed intervals brought a baby to be christened and a woman to be churched. Otherwise they hardly affected Mr. Conneally's life. The great officials who visited Carrowkeel to survey the benignant acti

rowkeel. They asked for no statistics, expected no results, but signed quarterly cheques for Mr. Conn

rying a girl to 'do for them.' Life under their altered circumstances was simplified. It seemed unnecessary to carry a meal from the room it was cooked in to another for the purpose of eating it, so the front rooms of the house, with their tattered furniture, were left to moulder quietly in the persistent damp. One door was felt to be sufficient for the ingress and egress of two people from a house. The kitchen door, being at the back of the house, was oftenest the sheltered one, so the front door was bolted, and the gra

formed a part of his father's life into which Hyacinth never really entered at all. He neither rebelled nor mocked. He simply remained outside. So when his father wandered off to solitary places on the seashore, and sat gazing into the sunset or a gathering storm, Hyacinth neither followed nor questioned him. Sometimes on winter nigh

love of what he read that the boy learned at all. Often while he tramped from his home to the village at midday his heart was hot within him with some great thought which had sprung to him from a hastily construed chorus of Euripides. S

, and, as is often done by poorer students, remained at home, merely passing the required examinations, until he took his degree, and the time c

ean, to vague regrets, weighted with misgivings, which would take no certain shape. There crowded upon him recollections of busy autumn days when the grain harvest overtook the belated hay-making, and men toiled till late in the fields; of long nights in the springtime when he tugged at the fishing-nets, and felt the mackerel slipping

to the fire. He wondered if his father had forgotten that this was their last evening together. Then suddenly,

ong ago forgotten all I learned there, and I have not missed the knowledge. It does no

ough with his father's ways of speech to know that

ou have already great thoughts, burning thoughts, but they will not of themselves bring you to Him. The other way is the only way. Shall I wish it for you, my son? Shall I give it to you for my blessing? May great tribulation come upon you in yo

t sure in his heart that the friendship of the Man of Sorrows was so well worth having

ight decision may be made for you. I do not know in what form it will come. Perhaps it will be as it was with me. He made the choice for me, for

time a glimpse of the meaning of the solitary life, the long prayers, and the meditations. He was profoundly move

d his car as he drove through the street to shake hands with him. Their wives shouted familiar blessings fr