Part 4

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_ Jemmy had not, during his first year's residence in the south, forgotten to request the kind curate's interference with the landlord, on behalf of his father. To be the instrument of restoring his family to their former comfortable holding under Colonel B------; would have afforded him, without excepting the certainty of his own eventual success, the highest gratification. Of this, however, there was no hope, and nothing remained for him but assiduity in his studies, and patience under the merciless scourge of his teacher. In addition to an engaging person and agreeable manners, nature had gifted him with a high order of intellect, and great powers of acquiring knowledge. The latter he applied to the business before him with indefatigable industry. The school at; which he settled was considered the first in Munster; and the master, notwithstanding his known severity, stood high, and justly so, in the opinion of the people, as an excellent classical and mathematical scholar. Jemmy applied himself to the study of both, and at the expiration of his second year had made such progress that he stood without a rival in the school.

It is usual, as we have said, for the poor scholar to go night after night, in rotation, with his schoolfellows; he is particularly welcome in the houses of those farmers whose children are not so far advanced as himself. It is expected that he should instruct them in the evenings, and enable them, to prepare their lessons for the following day, a task which he always performs with pleasure, because in teaching them he is confirming his own mind in the knowledge which he has previously acquired. Towards the end of the second year, however, he ceased to circulate in this manner. Two or three of the most independent parishioners, whose sons were only commencing their studies, agreed to keep him week about; an arrangement highly convenient to him, as by that means he was not so frequently dragged, as he had been, to the remotest parts of the parish. Being an expert penman, he acted also as secretary of grievances to the poor, who frequently employed him to draw up petitions to obdurate landlords, or to their more obdurate agents, and letters to soldiers in all parts of the world, from their anxious and affectionate relations. All these little services he performed kindly and promptly; many a blessing was fervently invoked upon his head; the "good word" and "the prayer" were all they could afford, as they said, "to the bouchal dhas oge * that tuck the world an him for sake o' the larnin', an' that hasn't the kindliness o' the mother's breath an' the mother's hand near him, the crathur."

* The pretty young boy. Boy in Ireland does not always imply youth.

About the middle of the third year he was once more thrown upon the general hospitality of the people. The three farmers with whom he had lived for the preceding six months emigrated to America, as did many others of that class which, in this country, most nearly approximates to the substantial yeomanry of England. The little purse, too, which he had placed in the hands of the kind priest, was exhausted; a season of famine, sickness, and general distress had set in; and the master, on understanding that he was without money, became diabolically savage. In short, the boy's difficulties increased to a perplexing degree. Even Thady and his grown companions, who usually interposed in his behalf when the master became excessive in correcting him, had left the school, and now the prospect before him was dark and cheerless indeed. For a few months longer, however, he struggled on, meeting every difficulty with meek endurance. From his very boyhood he had reverenced the sanctity of religion, and was actuated by a strong devotional spirit. He trusted in God, and worshipped Him night and morning with a sincere heart.

At this crisis he was certainly an object of pity; his clothes, which, for some time before had been reduced to tatters, he had replaced by a cast-off coat and small-clothes, a present from his friend the Curate, who never abandoned him. This worthy young man could not afford him money, for as he had but fifty pounds a year, with which to clothe, subsist himself, keep a horse, and pay rent, it was hardly to be expected that his benevolence could be extensive. In addition to this, famine and contagious disease raged with formidable violence in the parish; so that the claims upon his bounty of hundreds who lay huddled together in cold cabins, in out-houses, and even behind ditches, were incessant as well, as heart-rending. The number of interments that took place daily in the parish was awful; nothing could be seen but funerals attended by groups of ragged and emaciated creatures from whose hollow eyes gleamed forth the wolfish fire of famine. The wretched mendicants were countless, and the number of coffins that lay on the public roads--where, attended by the nearest relatives of the deceased, they had been placed for the purpose of procuring charity--were greater than ever had been remembered by the oldest inhabitant.

Such was the state of the parish when our poor scholar complained one day in school of severe illness. The early symptoms of the prevailing epidemic were well known; and, on examining more closely into his situation, it was clear that, according to the phraseology of the people, he had "got the faver on his back"--had caught "a heavy load of the faver." The Irish are particularly apprehensive of contagious maladies. The moment it had been discovered that Jemmy was infected, his schoolfellows avoided him with a feeling of terror scarcely credible, and the inhuman master was delighted at any circumstance, however calamitous, that might afford him a pretext for driving the friendless youth out of the school.

"Take," said he, "every thing belongin' to you out of my establishment: you were always a plague to me, but now more so than ever. Be quick, sirra, and nidificate for yourself somewhere else. Do you want to thranslate my siminary into an hospital, and myself into Lazarus, as president? Go off, you wild goose! and conjugate aegroto wherever you find a convenient spot to do it in." The poor boy silently and with difficulty arose, collected his books, and, slinging on his satchel, looked to his schoolfellows, as if he had said, "Which of you will afford me a place where to lay my aching head?" All, however, kept aloof from him; he had caught the contagion, and the contagion, they knew, had swept the people away in vast numbers. At length he spoke. "Is there any boy among you," he inquired, "who will bring me home? You know I am a stranger, an' far from my own, God help me!"

This was followed by a profound silence. Not one of those who had so often befriended him, or who would, on any other occasion, share their bed and their last morsel with him, would even touch his person, much less allow him, when thus plague-stricken, to take shelter under their roof. Such are the effects of selfishness, when it is opposed only by the force of those natural qualities that are not elevated into a sense of duty by clear and profound views of Christian truth. It is one thing to perform a kind action from constitutional impulse, and another to perform it as a fixed duty, perhaps contrary to that impulse.

Jemmy, on finding himself avoided like a Hebrew leper of old, silently left the school, and walked on without knowing whither he should ultimately direct his steps. He thought of his friend the priest, but the distance between him and his place of abode was greater, he felt, than his illness would permit him to travel. He walked on, therefore, in such a state of misery as can scarcely be conceived, much less described. His head ached excessively, an intense pain shot like death-pangs through his lower back and loins, his face was flushed, and his head giddy. In this state he proceeded, without money or friends; without a house to shelter him, or a bed on which to lie, far from his own relations, and with the prospect of death, under circumstances peculiarly dreadful, before him! He tottered on, however, the earth, as he imagined, reeling under him; the heavens, he thought, streaming with fire, and the earth indistinct and discolored. Home, the paradise of the absent--home, the heaven of the affections--with all its tenderness and blessed sympathies, rushed upon his heart. His father's deep but quiet kindness, his mother's sedulous love; his brothers, all that they had been to him--these, with their thousand heart-stirring associations, started into life before him again and again. But he was now ill, and the mother--Ah! the enduring sense of that mother's love placed her brightest, and strongest, and tenderest, in the far and distant group which his imagination bodied forth.

"Mother!" he exclaimed--"Oh, mother, why--why did I ever lave you? Mother! the son you loved is dyin' without a kind word, lonely and neglected, in a strange land! Oh, my own mother! why did I ever lave you?"

The conflict between his illness and his affections overcame him; he staggered--he grasped as if for assistance at the vacant air--he fell, and lay for some time in a state of insensibility.

The season was then that of midsummer, and early meadows were falling before the scythe. As the boy sank to the earth, a few laborers were eating their scanty dinner of bread and milk so near him, that only a dry low ditch ran between him and them. They had heard his words indistinctly, and one of them was putting the milk bottle to his lips when, attracted by the voice, he looked in the direction of the speaker, and saw him fall. They immediately recognized "the poor scholar," and in a moment were attempting to recover him.

"Why thin, my poor fellow, what's a shaughran wid you?"

Jemmy started for a moment, looked about him, and asked, "Where am I?"

"Faitha, thin, you're in Rory Connor's field, widin a few perches of the high-road. But what ails you, poor boy? Is it sick you are?"

"It is," he replied; "I have got the faver. I had to lave school; none o' them would take me home, an' I doubt I must die in a Christian counthry under the open canopy of heaven. Oh, for God's sake, don't lave me! Bring me to some hospital, or into the next town, where people may know that I'm sick, an' maybe some kind Christian will relieve me."

The moment he mentioned "faver," the men involuntarily drew back, after having laid him reclining against the green ditch.

"Thin, thundher an' turf, what's to be done?" exclaimed one of them, thrusting his spread fingers into his hair. "Is the poor boy to die widout help among Christyeens like us?"

"But hasn't he the sickness?" exclaimed another: "an' in that case, Pether, what's to be done?"

"Why, you gommoch, isn't that what I'm wantin' to know? You wor ever and always an ass, Paddy, except before you wor born, an' thin you wor like Major M'Curragh, worse nor nothin'. Why the sarra do you be spakin' about the sickness, the Lord protect us, whin you know I'm so timersome of it?"

"But considher," said another, edging off from Jemmy, however, "that he's a poor scholar, an' that there's a great blessin' to thim that assists the likes of him."

"Ay, is there that, sure enough, Dan; but you see--blur-an-age, what's to be done? He can't die this way, wid nobody wid him but himself."

"Let us help him!" exclaimed another, "for God's sake, an' we won't be apt to take it thin."

"Ay, but how can we help him, Frank? Oh, bedad, it 'ud be a murdherin' shame, all out, to let the crathur die by himself, widout company, so it would."

"No one wul take him in, for fraid o' the sickness. Why, I'll tell you what we'll do:--Let us shkame the remainder o' this day off o' the Major, an' build a shed for him on the road-side here, jist against the ditch. It's as dhry as powdher. Thin we can go through the neighbors, an' git thim to sit near him time about, an' to bring him little dhreeniens o' nourishment."

"Divil a purtier! Come thin, let us get a lot o' the neighbors, an' set about it, poor bouchal. Who knows but it may bring down a blessin' upon us aither in this world or the next."

"Amin! I pray Gorra! an' so it will sure I doesn't the Catechiz say it? 'There is but one Church,' says the Catechiz, 'one Faith, an' one Baptism.' Bedad, there's a power o' fine larnin' in the same Catechiz, so there is, an' mighty improvin'."

An Irishman never works for wages with half the zeal which he displays when working for love. Ere many hours passed, a number of the neighbors had assembled, and Jemmy found himself on a bunch of clean straw, in a little shed erected for him at the edge of the road.

Perhaps it would be impossible to conceive a more gloomy state of misery than that in which young M'Evoy found himself. Stretched on the side of the public road, in a shed formed of a few loose sticks covered over with "scraws," that is, the sward of the earth pared into thin stripes--removed above fifty perches from any human habitation--his body racked with a furious and oppressive fever--his mind conscious of all the horrors by which he was surrounded--without the comforts even of a bed or bedclothes--and, what was worst of all, those from whom he might expect kindness, afraid; to approach him! Lying helpless, under these circumstances, it ought not to be wondered at, if he wished that death might at once close his extraordinary sufferings, and terminate those straggles which filial piety had prompted him to encounter.

This certainly is a dark picture, but our humble hero knew that even there the power and goodness of God could support him. The boy trusted in God; and when removed into his little shed, and stretched upon his clean straw, he felt that his situation was, in good sooth, comfortable when contrasted with what it might have been, if left to perish behind a ditch, exposed to the scorching-heat of the sun by day, and the dews of heaven by night. He felt the hand of God even in this, and placed himself, with a short but fervent prayer, under his fatherly protection.

Irishmen however, are not just that description of persons who can pursue their usual avocations, and see a fellow-creature-die, without such attentions as they can afford him; not precisely so bad as that, gentle reader! Jemmy had not been two hours on his straw, when a second shed much larger than his own, was raised within a dozen yards of it: In this a fire was lit; a small pot was then procured, milk was sent in, and such other little comforts brought together, as they supposed necessary for the sick boy. Having accomplished these matters, a kind of guard was set to watch and nurse-tend him; a pitchfork was got, on the prongs of which they intended to reach him bread across the ditch; and a long-shafted shovel was borrowed, on which to furnish him drink with safety to themselves. That inextinguishable vein of humor, which in Ireland mingles even with death and calamity, was also visible here. The ragged, half-starved creatures laughed heartily at the oddity of their own inventions, and enjoyed the ingenuity with which they made shift to meet the exigencies of the occasion, without in the slightest degree having their sympathy and concern for the afflicted youth lessened.

When their arrangements were completed, one of them (he of the scythe) made a little whey, which, in lieu of a spoon, he stirred with the end of his tobacco-pipe; he then extended it across the ditch upon the shovel, after having put it in a tin porringer.

"Do you want a taste o' whay, avourneen?"

"Oh, I do," replied Jemmy; "give me a drink for God's sake."

"There it is, a bouchal, on the shovel. Musha if myself rightly knows what side you're lyin' an, or I'd put it as near your lips as I could. Come, man, be stout, don't be cast down at all at all; sure, bud-an-age, we' shovelin' the way to you, any how."

"I have it," replied the boy--"oh, I have it. May God never forget this to you, whoever you are."

"Faith, if you want to know who I am; I'm Pettier Connor the mower, that never seen to-morrow. Be Gorra, poor boy, you mustn't let your spirits down at all at all. Sure the neighbors is all bint to watch an' take care of you.--May I take away the shovel?--an' they've built a brave snug shed here beside yours, where they'll stay wid you time about until you get well. We'll feed you wid whay enough, bekase we've made up our minds to stale lots o' sweet milk for you. Ned Branagan an' I will milk Kody Hartigan's cows to-night, wid the help o' God. Divil a bit sin in it, so there isn't, an' if there is, too, be my sowl there's no harm in it any way--for he's but a nager himself, the same Rody. So, acushla, keep a light heart, for, be Gorra, you're sure o' the thin pair o' throwsers, any how. Don't think you're desarted--for you're not. It's all in regard o' bein' afeard o' this faver, or it's not this way you'd be; but, as I said a while agone, when you want anything, spake, for you'll still find two or three of us beside you here, night an' day. Now, won't you promise to keep your mind asy, when you know that we're beside you?"

"God bless you," replied Jemmy, "you've taken a weight off of my heart. I thought I'd die wid nobody near me at all."

"Oh, the sorra fear of it. Keep your heart up. We'll stale lots o' milk for you. Bad scran to the baste in the parish but we'll milk, sooner nor you'd want the whay, you crathur you."

The boy felt relieved, but his malady increased; and were it not that the confidence of being thus watched and attended to supported him, it is more than probable he would have sunk under it.

When the hour of closing the day's labor arrived, Major ------ came down to inspect the progress which his mowers had made, and the goodness of his crop upon his meadows. No sooner was he perceived at a distance, than the scythes were instantly resumed, and the mowers pursued their employment with an appearance of zeal and honesty that could not be suspected.

On arriving at the meadows, however, he was evidently startled at the miserable day's work they had performed.

"Why, Connor," said he, addressing the nurse-tender, "how is this? I protest you have not performed half a day's labor! This is miserable and shameful."

"Bedad, Major, it's thrue for your honor, sure enough. It's a poor day's work, the I never a doubt of it. But be all the books; that never was opened or shut, busier men! than we wor since mornin' couldn't be had; for love or money. You see, Major, these meadows, bad luck to them!--God pardon me for cursin' the harmless crathurs, for sure 'tisn't their fau't, sir: but you see, Major, I'll insinse you into it. Now look here, your honor. Did you ever see deeper: meadow nor that same, since you war foal---hem--sintce you war born, your honor? Maybe, your honor, Major, 'ud just take the scythe an' sthrive to cut a swaythe?"

"Nonsense, Connor; don't you know I cannot."

"Thin, be Gorra, sir, I wish you could; thry it. I'd kiss the book, we did more labor, an' worked harder this day, nor any day for the last fortnight. If it was light grass, sir--see here, Major, here's alight bit--now, look at how the scythe runs through it! Thin look at here agin--just observe this, Major--why, murdher alive, don't you see how slow she goes through that where the grass is heavy! Bedad, Major, you'll be made up this suson wid your hay, any how. Divil carry the finer meadow ever I put the scythe in nor this same meadow, God bless it!"

"Yes, I see it, Connor; I agree with you as to its goodness. But the reason of that is, Connor, that I always direct my steward myself in laying it down for grass. Yes, you're right, Connor; if the meadow were light, you could certainly mow comparatively a greater space in a day."

"Be the livin' farmer, God pardon me for swearin', it's a pleasure to have dalins wid a gintleman like you, that knows things as cute as if you war a mower yourself, your honor. Bedad, I'll go bail, sir, it wouldn't be hard to tache you that same."

"Why, to tell you the truth, Connor, you have hit me off pretty well. I'm beginning to get a taste for agriculture."

"But," said Connor, scratching his head, "won't your honor allow us the price of a glass, or a pint o' portlier, for our hard day's work. Bad cess to me, sir, but this meadow 'ill play the puck wid us afore we get it finished.--Atween ourselves, sir--if it wouldn't be takin' freedoms--if you'd look to your own farmin' yourself. The steward, sir, is a dacent kind of a man; but, sowl, he couldn't hould a candle to your honor in seein' to the best way of doin' a thing, sir. Won't you allow us glasses apiece, your honor? Faix, we're kilt entirely, so we are."

"Here is half-a-crown among you, Connor; but don't get drunk."

"Dhrunk! Musha, long may you reign, Sir! Be the scythe in my hand, I'd rather--Och, faix, you're one o' the ould sort, sir--the raal Irish gintleman, your honor. An' sure your name's far and near for that, any how."

Connor's face would have done the heart of Brooke or Cruikshank good, had either of them seen it charged with humor so rich as that which beamed upon it, when the Major left them to enjoy their own comments upon what had happened.

"Oh, be the livin' farmer," said Connor, "are we all alive at all afther doin' the Major! Pp., thin, the curse o' the crows upon you, pijor, darlin', but you are a Manus!* The damn' rip o' the world, that wouldn't give the breath he breathes to the poor for God's sake, and he'll threwn a man half-a-crown that 'll blarney him for farmin', and him doesn't know the differ atween a Cork-red a Yellow-leg."**

* A soft booby easily hoaxed.

**Different kinds of potatoes.

"Faith, he's the boy that knows how to make a Judy of himself any way, Pether," exclaimed another. "The divil a hapurt'h asier nor to give these Quality the bag to hould, so there isn't. An' they think themselves so cute, too!"

"Augh!" said a third, "couldn't a man find the soft side o' them as asy as make out the way to' his own nose, widout being led to it. Divil a sin it is to do them, any way. Sure, he thinks we wor tooth an' nail at the meadow all day; an' me thought I'd never recover it, to see Pether here--the rise he tuck out of him! Ha, ha, ha--och, och, murdher, oh!"

"Faith," exclaimed Connor, "'twas good, you see, to help the poor scholar; only for it we couldn't get shkamin' the half-crown out of him. I think we ought to give the crathur half of it, an' him so sick: he'll be wantin' it worse nor ourselves."

"Oh, be Gorra, he's fairly entitled to that. I vote him fifteen pince."

"Surely!" they exclaimed unanimously. "Tundher-an'-turf! wasn't he the manes of gettin' it for us?"

"Jemmy, a bouchal," said Connor, across the ditch to M'Evoy, "are you sleepin'?"

"Sleepin'! Oh, no," replied Jemmy; "I'd give the wide world for one wink of asy sleep."

"Well, aroon, here's fifteen pince for you, that we skham--Will I tell him how we cot it?"

"No, don't," replied his neighbors; "the boy's given to devotion, and maybe might scruple to take it."

"Here's fifteen pince, avourneen, on the shovel, that we're givin' you for God's sake. If you over * this, won't you offer up a prayer for us? Won't you, avick?"

* That is--to get over--to survive.

"I can never forget your kindness," replied Jemmy; "I will always pray for you, and may God for ever bless you and yours!

"Poor crathur! May the Heavens above have prosthration on him! Upon my sowl, it's good to have his blessin' an' his prayer. Now don't fret, Jemmy; we're lavin' you wid a lot o' neighbors here. They'll watch you time about, so that whin you want anything, call, avourneen, an' there'll still be some one here to answer. God bless you, an' restore you, till we come wid the milk we'll stale for you, wid the help o' God. Bad cess to me, but it 'ud be a mortual sin, so it would, to let the poor boy die at all, an' him so far from home. For, as the Catechiz says 'There is but one Faith, one Church, and one Baptism!' Well, the readin' that's in that Catechiz is mighty improvin', glory be to God!"

It would be utterly impossible to detail the affliction which our poor scholar suffered in this wretched shed, for the space of a fortnight, notwithstanding the efforts of those kind-hearted people to render his situation comfortable.

The little wigwam they had constructed near him was never, even for a moment, during his whole illness, without two or three persons ready to attend him. In the evening their numbers increased; a fire was always kept burning, over which a little pot for making whey or gruel was suspended. At night they amused each other with anecdotes and laughter, and occasionally with songs, when certain that their patient was not asleep. Their exertions to steal milk for him were performed with uncommon glee, and related among themselves with great humor. These thefts would have been unnecessary, had not the famine which then prevailed through the province been so excessive. The crowds that swarmed about the houses of wealthy farmers, supplicating a morsel to keep body and soul together, resembled nothing which our English readers ever had an opportunity of seeing. Ragged, emaciated creatures, tottered about with an expression of wildness and voracity in their gaunt features; fathers and mothers reeled under the burthen of their beloved children, the latter either sick, or literally expiring for want of food; and the widow, in many instances, was compelled to lay down her head to die, with the wail, the feeble wail, of her withered orphans mingling with her last moans! In such a state of things it was difficult to procure a sufficient quantity of milk to allay the natural thirst even of one individual, when parched by the scorching heat of a fever. Notwithstanding this, his wants were for the most part anticipated, so far as their means would allow them; his shed was kept waterproof; and either shovel or pitchfork always ready to be extended to him, by way of substitution for the right hand of fellowship.

When he called for anything, the usual observation was, "Husht! the crathur's callin'. I must take the shovel an' see what he wants."

There were times, it is true, when the mirth of the poor fellows was' very low, for hunger was generally among themselves; there were times when their own little shed presented a touching and melancholy spectacle--perhaps we ought also to add, a noble one; for, to contemplate a number of men, considered rude and semi-barbarous, devoting themselves, in the midst of privations the most cutting and oppressive, to the care and preservation of a strange lad, merely because they knew him to be without friends and protection, is to witness a display of virtue truly magnanimous. The food on which some of the persons were occasionally compelled to live, was blood boiled up with a little oatmeal; for when a season of famine occurs in Ireland, the people usually bleed the cows and bullocks to preserve themselves from actual starvation. It is truly a sight of appalling misery to behold feeble women gliding across the country, carrying their cans and pitchers, actually trampling upon fertility, and fatness, and collected in the corner of some grazier's farm waiting, gaunt and ravenous as Ghouls, for their portion of blood. During these melancholy periods of want, everything in the shape of an esculent disappears. The miserable creatures will pick up chicken-weed, nettles, sorrell, bug-loss, preshagh, and sea-weed, which they will boil and eat with the voracity of persons writhing under the united agonies of hunger and death! Yet the very country thus groaning under such a terrible sweep of famine is actually pouring from all her ports a profusion of food, day after day; flinging it from her fertile bosom, with the wanton excess of a prodigal oppressed by abundance.

Despite, however, of all the poor scholar's nurse-guard suffered, he was attended with a fidelity of care and sympathy which no calamity could shake. Nor was this care fruitless; after the fever had passed through its usual stages he began to recover. In fact, it has been observed very truly, that scarcely any person has been known to die under circumstances similar to those of the poor scholar. These sheds, the erection of which is not unfrequent in case of fever, have the advantage of pure free air, by which the patient is cooled and refreshed. Be the cause of it what it may, the fact has been established, and we feel satisfaction in being able to adduce our humble hero as an additional proof of the many recoveries which take place in situations apparently so unfavorable to human life. But how is it possible to detail what M'Evoy suffered during this fortnight of intense agony? Not those who can command the luxuries of life--not those who can reach its comforts--nor those who can supply themselves with its bare necessaries--neither the cotter who struggles to support his wife and helpless children--the mendicant who begs from door to door--nor even the felon in his cell--can imagine what he felt in the solitary misery of his feverish bed. Hard is the heart that cannot feel his sorrows, when, stretched beside the common way, without a human face to look on, he called upon the mother whose brain, had she known his situation, would have been riven--whose affectionate heart would have been broken, by the knowledge of his affliction. It was a situation which afterwards appeared to him dark and terrible. The pencil of the painter could not depict it, nor the pen of the poet describe it, except like a dim vision, which neither the heart nor the imagination are able to give to the world as a tale steeped in the sympathies excited by reality.

His whole heart and soul, as he afterwards acknowledged, were, during his trying illness, at home. The voices of his parents, of his sisters, and of his brothers, were always in his ears; their countenances surrounded his cold and lonely shed; their hands touched him; their eyes looked upon him in sorrow--and their tears bedewed him. Even there, the light of his mother's love, though she herself was distant, shone upon his sorrowful couch; and he has declared, that in no past moment of affection did his soul ever burn with a sense of its presence so strongly as it did in the heart-dreams of his severest illness. But God is love, and "temporeth the wind to the shorn lamb."

Much of all his sufferings would have been alleviated, were it not that his two best friends in the parish, Thady and the curate, had been both prostrated by the fever at the same time with himself. There was consequently no person of respectability in the neighborhood cognizant of his situation. He was left to the humbler class of the peasantry, and honorably did they, with all their errors and ignorance, discharge those duties which greater wealth and greater knowledge would, probably, have left unperformed.

On the morning of the last day he ever intended to spend in the shed, at eleven o'clock he hoard the sounds of horses' feet passing along the road, The circumstance was one quite familiar to him; but these horsemen, whoever they might be, stopped, and immediately after, two respectable looking men, dressed in black, approached him. His forlorn state and frightfully wasted appearance startled them, and the younger of the two asked, in a tone of voice which went directly to his heart, how it was that they found him in a situation so desolate.

The kind interest implied by the words, and probably a sense of his utterly destitute state, affected him strongly, and he burst into tears. The strangers looked at each other, then at him; and if looks could express sympathy, theirs expressed it.

"My good boy," said the first, "how is it that we find you in a situation so deplorable and wretched as this? Who are you, or why is it that you have not a friendly roof I to shelter you?"

"I'm a poor scholar," replied Jemmy, "the son of honest but reduced parents: I came to this part of the country with the intention of preparing myself for Maynooth and, if it might plase God, with the hope of being able to raise them out of their distress."

The strangers looked more earnestly at the boy; sickness had touched his fine intellectual features into a purity of expression almost ethereal. His fair skin appeared nearly transparent, and the light of truth and candor lit up his countenance with a lustre which affliction could not dim.

The other stranger approached him more nearly, stooped for a moment, and felt his pulse.

"How long have you been in this country?" he inquired.

"Nearly three years."

"You have been ill of the fever which is so prevalent; how did you come to be left to the chance of perishing upon the highway?"

"Why, sir, the people were afeard to let me into their houses in consequence of the faver. I got ill in school, sir, but no boy would venture to bring me home, an' the master turned me out, to die, I believe. May God forgive him!"

"Who was your master, my child?"

"The great' Mr.------, sir. If Mr. O'Brien, the curate of the parish, hadn't been ill himself at the same time, or if Mr. O'Rorke's son, Thady, hadn't been laid on his back, too, sir, I wouldn't suffer what I did."

"Has the curate been kind to you?"

"Sir, only for him and the big boys I couldn't stay in the school, on account of the master's cruelty, particularly since my money was out."

"You are better now--are you not?" said the other gentleman.

"Thank God, sir!--oh, thanks be to the Almighty, I am! I expect to be able to lave this place to-day or to-morrow."

"And where do you intend to go when you recover?"

The boy himself had not thought of this, and the question came on him so unexpectedly, that he could only reply--

"Indeed, sir, I don't know."

"Had you," inquired the second stranger, "testimonials from your parish priest?"

"I had, sir: they are in the hands of Mr. O'Brien. I also had a character from my father's landlord."

"But how," asked the other, "have you existed here during your illness? Have you been long sick?"

"Indeed I can't tell you, sir, for I don't know how the time passed at all; but I know, sir, that there were always two or three people attendin' me. They sent me whatever they thought I wanted, upon a shovel or a pitchfork, across the ditch, because they were afraid to come near me."

During the early part of the dialogue, two or three old hats, or caubeens, might have been seen moving steadily over from the wigwam to the ditch which ran beside the shed occupied by M'Evoy. Here they remained stationary, for those who wore them were now within hearing of the conversation, and ready to give their convalescent patient a good word, should it be necessary.

"How were you supplied with drink and medicine?" asked the younger stranger.

"As I've just told you, sir," replied Jemmy; "the neighbors here let me want for nothing that they had. They kept me in more whey than I could use; and they got me medicine, too, some way or other. But indeed, sir, during a great part of the time I was ill, I can't say how they attended me: I wasn't insinsible, sir, of what was goin' on about me."

One of those who lay behind the ditch now arose, and after a few hems and scratchings of the head, ventured to join in the conversation.

"Pray have you, my man," said the elder of the two, "been acquainted with the circumstances of this boy's illness?"

"Is it the poor scholar, my Lord?* Oh thin bedad it's myself that has that. The poor crathur was in a terrible way all out, so he was. He caught the faver in the school beyant, one day, an' was turned out by the nager o' the world that he was larnin' from."

* The peasantry always address a Roman Catholic Bishop as "My Lord."

"Are you one of the persons who attended him?"

"Och, och, the crathar! what could unsignified people like us do for him, barrin' a thrifle? Any how, my Lord, it's the meracle o' the world that he was ever able to over it at all. Why, sir, good luck to the one of him but suffered as much, wid the help o' God, as 'ud overcome fifty men!"

"How did you provide him with drink at such a distance from any human habitation?"

"Throth, hard enough we found it, sir, to do that same: but sure, whether or not, my Lord, we couldn't be sich nagers as to let him die all out, for want o' sometlrm' to moisten his throath wid."

"I hope," inquired the other, "you had nothing to do in the milk-stealing which has produced such an outcry in this immediate neighborhood?"

"Milk-stalin'! Oh, bedad, sir, there never was the likes known afore in the caunthry. The Lord forgive them, that did it! Be gorra, sir, the wickedness o' the people': mighty improving if one 'ud take warnin' by it, glory be to God!"

"Many of the fanners' cows have been milked at night, Connor--perfectly drained. Even my own cows have not escaped; and we who have suffered are certainly determined, if possible, to ascertain those who have committed the theft. I, for my part, have gone even beyond my ability in relieving the wants of the poor, during this period of sickness and famine; I therefore deserved this the less."

"By the powdbers, your honor, if any gintleman desarved to have his cows unmilked, it's yourself. But, as I said this minute, there's no end to the wickedness o' the people, so there's not, although the Catechiz is against them; for, says it, 'there is but one Faith, one Church, an' one Baptism.' Now, sir, isn't it quare that people, wid sich words in the book afore them, won't be guided by it? I suppose they thought it only a white sin, sir, to take the milk, the thieves o' the world."

"Maybe, your honor," said another, "that it was only to keep the life in some poor sick crathur that wanted it more nor you or the farmers, that they did it. There's some o' the same farmers desarve worse, for they're keepin' up the prices o' their male and praties upon the poor, an' did so all along, that they might make money by our outlier destitution."

"That is no justification for theft," observed the graver of the two. "Does any one among you suspect those who committed it in this instance? If you do, I command you, as your Bishop, to mention them."

"How, for instance," added the other, "were you able to supply this sick boy with whey during his illness?"

"Oh thin, gintlemen," replied Connor, dexterously parrying the question, "but it's a mighty improvin' thing to see our own Bishop,--God spare his Lordship to us!--an the Protestant minister o' the parish joinin' together to relieve an' give good advice to the poor! Bedad, it's settin' a fine example, so it is, to the Quality, if they'd take patthern by it."

"Reply," said the Bishop, rather sternly, "to the questions we have asked you."

"The quistions, your Lordship? It's proud an' happy we'd be to do what you want; but the sarra man among us can do it, barin' we'd say what we ought not to say. That's the thruth, my Lord; an' surely 'tisn't your Gracious Reverence that 'ud want us to go beyant that?"

"Certainly not," replied the Bishop. "I warn you both against falsehood and fraud; two charges which might frequently be brought against you in your intercourse with the gentry of the country, whom you seldom scruple to deceive and mislead, by gliding into a character, when speaking to them, that is often the reverse of your real one; whilst at the same time you are both honest and sincere to persons of your own class. Put away this practice, for it is both sinful and discreditable."

"God bless your Lordship! an' many thanks to your Gracious Reverence for advisin' us! Well we know that it's the blessed thing to folly your words."

"Bring over that naked, starved-looking man, who is stirring the fire under that pot," said the Hector. "He looks like Famine itself."

"Paddy Dunn! will you come over here to his honor, Paddy! He's goin' to give you somethin," said Connor, adding of his own accord the last clause of his message.

The tattered creature approached him with a gleam of expectation in his eyes that appeared like insanity.

"God bless your honor for your goodness," exclaimed Paddy. "It's me that's in it, sir!--Paddy Dunn, sir, sure enough; but, indeed, I'm the next thing to my own ghost, sir, now God help me!"

"What, and for whom are you cooking?"

"Jist the smallest dhrop in life, sir, o' gruel, to keep the sowl in that lonely crathur, sir, the poor scholar."

"Pray how long is it since you have eaten anything yourself?"

The tears burst from the eyes of the miserable creature as he replied--

"Before God in glory, your honor, an' in the presence of his Lordship here, I only got about what 'ud make betther nor half a male widin the last day, sir. 'Twas a weeshy grain o' male that I got from a friend; an' as Ned Connor here tauld me that this crathur had nothin' to make the gruel for him, why I shared it wid him, bekase he couldn't even beg it, sir, if he wanted it, an' him not able to walk yit."

The worthy pastor's eyes glistened with a moisture that did him honor. Without a word of observation, he slipped a crown into the hand of Dunn, who looked at it as if he had been paralyzed.

"Oh thin," said he, fervently, "may every hair on your honor's head become a mould-candle to light you into glory! The world's goodness is in your heart, sir; an' may all the blessin's of Heaven rain down upon you an' yours!"

The two gentlemen then gave assistance to the poor scholar, whom the Bishop addressed in kind and encouraging language:

"Come to me, my good boy," he added, "and if, on further inquiry, I find that your conduct has been such as I believe it to have been, you may rest assured, provided also you continue worthy of my good opinion, that I shall be a friend and protector to you. Call on me when you got well, and I will speak to you at greater length."

"Well," observed Connor, when they were gone, "the divil's own hard puzzle the Bishop had me in, about stalin' the milk. It went agin' the grain wid me to tell him the lie, so I had to invint a bit o' truth to keep my conscience clear; for sure there was not a man among us that could tell him, barrin' we said that we oughtn't to say. Doesn't all the world know that a man oughtn't to condimn himself? That was thruth, any way; but divil a scruple I'd have in blammin' the other--not but that he's one o' the best of his sort. Paddy Dunn, quit lookin' at that crown, but get the shovel an' give the boy his dhrink--he's wantin' it."

The agitation of spirits produced by Jemmy's cheering interview with the Bishop was, for three days afterwards, somewhat prejudicial to his convalescence. In less than a week, however, he was comfortably settled with Mr. O'Rorke's family, whose kindness proved to him quite as warm as he had expected.

When he had remained with them a few days, he resolved to recommence his studies under his tyrant master. He certainly knew that his future attendance at the school would be penal to him, but he had always looked forward to the accomplishment of his hopes as a task of difficulty and distress. The severity to be expected from the master could not, he thought, be greater than that which he had already suffered; he therefore decided, if possible, to complete his education under him. _

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