er? Thanks! This little time-stained book saw some curious scenes.
It was my companion in many a rough adventure. In these old times it was
quite a common experience for myself to leave home at six o'clock in the
morning so as to be at the station-house by seven. By the way, you did
murder the names of the mountain town-lands when calling the stations
last Sunday. You must try and get the 'bloss' of the Irish on your
tongue. Well, we usually heard confessions from seven to three o'clock
in the afternoon, with just an interval for breakfast--"

"Pardon me, sir, but do you mean to say the people remained fasting and
received Holy Communion at three o'clock?"

"Yes, my dear young man, that was an every-day experience. I remember a
mission that was given in the town of N----, where I was curate in '54,
the year the first great missions were given by Fathers Bernard and
Petcherine. One evening, dead tired after a continuous day's work, I was
crossing the church toward the sacristy, when a huge shaggy countryman
stopped me. It was just half-past ten o'clock. 'I'm for Communion, your
reverence,' said he. I was a little irritable and therefore a little
sarcastic at the time. 'It is usually the habit of Catholics to receive
Holy Communion fasting,' said I, never dreaming but that the man was
after his supper. 'For the matter of that, your reverence,' said he, 'I
could have received Communion any minit these last three days; for God
is my witness, neither bite nor sup has crossed my lips, not even a
spoonful of wather.' But to come back. Dear me, how easy it is to get me
off the rail! After three o'clock I used to start out for my sick-calls;
and, will you believe me, I was often out all night, going from one
cabin to another, sometimes six or seven miles apart; and I often rode
home in the morning when the larks were singing above the sod and the
sun was high in the sky. Open that quarto."

He did. The leaves were as black as the cover, and clung together,
tattered as they were.

"The rain and the wind of Ireland," I said. "It was no easy job to read
Matins, with one hand clutching the reins and the pommel of the saddle,
and the other holding that book in a mountain hurricane. But you are not
a Manichaean, are you?"

He looked at me questioningly.

"I mean you don't see Mephistopheles rising in that gentle cloud of
steam from my glass?"

"Oh no," he said; "you have your tastes, and I mine. Both are equally
innocuous. But