A CONNAUGHT NIGHT.

13

The conviction was a painful one, and gave me food for thought during my solitary evening in that comfortless Connaught hostelry.

It had been my purpose to leave Galway on the following day, but the morning was ushered in by a gale of wind, accompanied with such unremitting and fiercely driving rain, that it was impossible for any but the most determined and completely weather-proof adventurer to trust his person on the outside of that most uncomfortable of vehicles, namely, an Irish car. I wandered about the town, however, wrapped in the thickest and most impenetrable of " Cordings;" and it being Sunday, I ventured into the church denominated that of St. Nicholas, and listened to Father Tom's discoorse.

And a very good discoorse it was, although somewhat over-comforting methought, and tending to increase the influence of the priest over his flock, inasmuch as it led the congregation to believe that in the hands of their spiritual directors are the issues of life and death. Saving this peculiarity-one, however, which is by no means confined to the portly Father Tom-there was nothing particularly to be remarked upon, if I except the unpleasant odour of damp walls, which, together with that of stale incense, and the pungent peat smell arising from

the moist garments of the congregation, produced a pot-pourri of perfumes anything but agreeable.

For the space of more than eight-and-forty hours was I weather-bound in that emporium of dirt, bad living, noise, and whisky-drinking yclept Filboy's Hotel. But I did not regret my temporary imprisonment, inasmuch as it brought me acquainted with a pleasant Anglo-Celt, who, partly for piscatorial, and partly for business purposes, had been for more than two years a resident in the West. From him I learnt many amusing anecdotes of the country people, with whom he had evidently associated on terms of tolerable intimacy; and among other characteristic stories related by him concerning them, there was one which, from the kind of romance attending it, particularly attracted my

attention.

I hardly know whether or not I may venture to assert that the adventure, which in the next chapter I shall give as nearly as possible in the relator's own. words, is entirely true; but that it is founded on fact, I have Mr. Sullivan's own authority for declaring.

CHAPTER II.

WHY PHIL MAGUIRE WENT WESTWARD.

"WELL! Mrs. Flannagan, and how about your friend Father Flannery?"

"Deed, your Honour, it's little I'd be seeing him the time past. I'm thinking it's undher the salt

wather he is."

"Under the salt water! Father Flannery drowned! Never!"

"Is it drowned, your Honour?"

"Yes; didn't you say he was under the salt water?"

"It's at Louisberg he is, your Honour."

"Oh! I understand; taking the sea-baths." "He is, your Honour."

"And so, till Father Flannery gives leave, your children will have no schooling?"

"That's it, your Honour. I wouldn't like to go agin his Riv'rence; and I did hear as much that the clergy would be saying the childer of the neighbours

might be let go to the Church of England schools, but they wouldn't allow the joompers anyway; seeing that they do be speaking awful agin the Virgin Mary, and making the childer read the Bible, and go agin the clergy."

"But, my good woman, you never made these objections till you had secured all the good new clothes for your children. I remember that you were all for sending them to school when you were promised frocks and petticoats to send them in." "Is it the petticoats, your Honour?"

I looked into her face, and saw cunning in every line of it. She was a small spare woman, with an unwashed wrinkled face, and (though her youngest child was an infant yet unweaned) the meshes of hair which escaped from under her cap were thickly mingled with grey. Her small thatched hovel was built in a hollow beneath the road, rearing its modest grass-grown head at the distance of about a hundred yards from the spot where we stood, and conveying in its architectural simplicity no very exalted idea of the boasted improvement in the dwellings of the Irish peasantry.

She was a hard-working woman, who had been chosen as the partner of his cares by a club-footed cripple; an honest harmless creature, who, in process &

VISIT TO THE HOLY WELL.

17

of time, had made her the mother of a "long wake family." Shock-headed, turf-dried little animals they were, utterly untutored; and deplorably ignorant of the blessings of soap and water. Behind the hovel was the "little lock of pratees" with its narrow, unsightly "lazy beds" looking anything but green, and smelling ominously of the dread disease which was already beginning to show its premonitory symptoms. One wind-tossed thorntree whose head was bent resolutely N.N.E., stood near the cabin, and under it the goat and cow that gave the "sup o' milk" to the family, sheltered their projecting bones, and weather-beaten ragged hides.

It was indeed a melancholy picture, and most melancholy of all was the mother's cunning face as she peered curiously into mine. At another time I might have reasoned with the woman, but being in haste I contented myself with a polite inquiry after the health of the absent Pether, and prepared to pursue my journey.

"Sure it's to the Holy Well he's gone, yer Honour! Saving your prisance, he's had a great pain in his heart this long while, and was three days lying, and taking nothing at all."

"Poor fellow! Well, I'll see him on the road,

C