eign band had
desecrated the Druid faith and must be punished with death. Then the
King told the priests to go and fetch Saint Patrick and bring him to
judgment, but the priests feared the fire that had been kindled,
thinking that it had magic powers. So they went as far as they dared
and called out to Saint Patrick, summoning him to appear before the
judges of the land.

Promptly and with fearless demeanor, Saint Patrick joined the priests
and was taken before the King. And when the King demanded of him how he
had dared to disobey the laws of the country and profane its religion,
Saint Patrick answered that he did so because the light of the
Christian faith was infinitely brighter than the light of any fire that
he or any one else had power to kindle; and that the fire he had built
was merely a sign to call the Irish to the worship of the true God.
Then he preached, and his words were so wise and spoken with such
weight of eloquence that many that heard him became Christians on the
spot, and the work of converting Ireland was soon well under way.

There were many of the Irish that loved Saint Patrick, but he had many
bitter enemies. On one occasion a powerful Irishman, who was enraged at
the Saint for having taken a stone sacred to the Druids for a Christian
altar, vowed that he must die. So he lay in wait in a patch of woods
near a road over which he knew Saint Patrick would pass, with a sharp
javelin to pierce his heart.

Saint Patrick had an Irish boy for his servant and this boy knew of the
threat and the place and was greatly afraid for the life of his beloved
master. But he knew, too, that it would be useless to ask Saint Patrick
to go by another road, for fear was unknown to him. So the boy
pretended to be weary and asked Saint Patrick to take the reins of the
horse that they were driving; and the brave lad seated himself in his
master's place. They came to the wood; there was a sudden stirring of
the bushes and the hiss of a javelin which imbedded itself in the boy's
heart, killing him instantly. The assassin had taken his master for the
ordinary driver and Saint Patrick's life was saved.

Ardently the Saint set to work to bring about the conversion of the
Irish, and he did his work so well that when he became an old man there
were no heathen left in Ireland, and his name was loved and venerated
from one end of the island to the other. And the legends grew up so
quickly about him that it is hard to separate