in Nature and the boys heard Him.

Towards the end of the week one of those Munster boys came and touched me
and said, "Your Riverence! Your Riverence!" he says. "You're a gentleman."

I _knew_ I had got that boy.

Now, if you are an old angler you know what happens if you begin to tug at
the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he
happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him, let
him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him play.
I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for his
compliment and then walked away--with my eyes over my shoulder, for if he
hadn't come after me I should have been after him.

Presently he pulled my tunic and said, "Won't you give me a minute, sir?"

"What's the trouble?" I said.

"Sir," he said, with a little catch in his voice that I can hear now,
"you've got something I haven't."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"It's like the singing of a little song, and it gets into my heart. I want
it. Won't you tell me how to get it? I want it."

"Sonny," I said, "it's for you. You can have it at the same price I paid
for it."

"Begorra," says he, "you will tell me to give up my religion, you will!"

I said, "If God has put anything in your life that helps you to be a
better and a nobler and a braver man, He doesn't want you to give it up."

"He doesn't?" he asked. "What am I to give up, then?"

And I replied, "Your sin."

The boy said again, "You're a gentleman."

If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would have
snapped and I would have lost my fish.

That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we knelt
down, and when he went he said, "I've got it, sir. I've got the little
song--_and it's singing_."

* * * * *

At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the
Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had got
the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he began to
wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers to him, and
said,

"I don't know what he's going to do. I hope he's not going to give us a
revival meeting or something of that sort. I hope he knows that one-third
of these fellows are Roman Catholics."

Well, of course I knew, and I was laying my plans accordingly. What right
have you or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that to try