"That is where Gascoigne hid himself some time ago, is it not?" asked Tremlett, in whose manner there lurked a threat.

"The same; but, Oswald, so long a time has now elapsed since you have heard mention even of my friend's name, that it can scarcely be an effort to you to abstain from speaking of him, and we will therefore, if you please, pass by the spot in silence. See, you have already distressed poor Bertha, for you are turning a day of promised pleasure into one of painful memories, and are sorely embittering the last hours that we are to spend together. Mark!" he continued, turning to me, and speaking with a sudden change of tone, "think you that Job will let us now 'lie to' for dinner, as Bertha has been very provident, and will be disappointed if we do not appreciate her merits as a cateress.”

Collett made no difficulty in acceding to Edward's proposal; and, to the satisfaction of all, our little voyage ended more cheerfully than at one time we had dared to anticipate.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SACRED REEK-THE WEDDING BREAKFAST

PRIESTLY ASSAULTS.

THREE days of heavy and continued rain, accompanied by a gale of wind which would hardly have been out of place in either of the Equinoxes, followed on the departure of the guest whose presence had added so little to our enjoyment: but on the fourth, notwithstanding the appearance simultaneously in the sky of three rainbows (an infallible sign, according to a certain weather-wise Dominick Moore, that from the "ind" of one of them a "loomp of ruin" would surely fall), we decided on setting at naught those gloomy prognostications, and on embarking in the "Humming Bird" for the Bay of Islands, with the intention of assisting at the great annual "station," and Pathern, about to be held on the base and summit of Old Croagh Patrick.

"Shure it's the greatest in all Ireland, your

Honour, and it's fourteen times I've been up the same, by the blessing o' God."

"No; but on me feet, your Honour, and fifteen times round the top o' the mountain, which is as good as an English mile aitch turn, and onst round to the altar on the hands and knees, and the stones very displazing an' cogglesome on me, saving your Honour's presence.'

"Well, you're a great pilgrim entirely, Dominick; but now, tell me," "I said, "were there many doing the same each time you were there?"

"Troth, and there were, your Honour; and hundreds, ay, and thousands, in it, and them saying their beads-men and women-for the honour o' God!'

"Did your priest send you there for penance?" "Bedad, and he did not, your Honour. I went of my own head."

He was an excellent, simple-hearted creature, that same Dominick, a near "frind," too, of more than one "pillar of the church," but a very poor man withal. He had a strangely vacant and watery eye, and was said by some (and indeed he looked it) to be "a little light;" nevertheless, he was a great

THE SACRED REEK.

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scholar, and "had the Latin and the figures" at his fingers' ends.

I can see him before me now, with his bony face, large features, and huge brazen spectacles, the which were always placed upside down upon his nose, and fastened to the one button that still adorned his rusty coat by a long piece of packthread. There was in every—aye, even in the very poorest-cabin a welcome and a meal for harmless, learned, half-witted Dominick Moore, whose profession was that of parish clerk; whilst he eked out his precarious bachelor existence, by what he called the labours of "Escularpeeous," namely, the physicking and attending upon the various ailments of the four-footed, as well as of the human creation.

แ

Sharing, too, in the innumerable superstitions of those he pretends to heal," added Fairholme, "for -would you believe it, Mark?—there are numbers of the peasantry in this country who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, from an idea -deeply rooted, and one which we have striven in vain to combat-that the vaccine matter may possibly have been taken from Protestant subjects; and that in that case, the infant operated upon must become fatally and inveterately inoculated with the dreadful disease of heresy."

"How unutterably absurd," I remarked, laughing heartily at this instance of superstitious ignorance, "and at the same time what a melancholy proof of the virulent animosity occasioned by difference of creed. But, Fairholme, who do I see before us, on that outside car? Surely they are not nuns, in such a very unconcealing vehicle."

But in spite of my incredulity, and of the great improbability of such a display on the pathern-day, nuns they were, sure enough. Two of them seated side by side, with their black serge garments folded closely round them, and with one hand over their eyes, whilst the other held the heavy cross and beads. A thin, tall priest very ineffectually balanced the good sisters on the off-side of the car, and the whole party was enveloped in what is very rare in this country-namely, a cloud of dust.

"I believe one of those Sisters of Mercy to be foremost amongst the best women in the world,” said Bertha, when the car was out of sight. "The good that she, and the nuns of her order, do amongst the poor, is incalculable; is incalculable; and she-Sister Mary, I mean-is so warm-hearted, so meek, so charitable, in the best sense of the word, that I often long to make her known to some at home who condemn and loathe so bitterly, and so indis

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