himself writes poetry, and writes it well?"

"May God forgive him!" I said fervently. Then I got sorry, as this was
not reverent, and a bright thought struck me.

"What kind of poetry does His Holiness write?"

"Why, the most beautiful Latin elegiacs and hexameters."

"I thought so," I said triumphantly. "I knew that the Holy Father would
write nothing but in the style of the divine Mantuan. If you do anything
that way, my boy, I'll forgive you. Keep to your classics, keep to your
classics, and you're all right."

It was delightful to find us, the last remnant of the great generation
of the classical priests of Ireland, backed up by the first authority in
the world.

* * * * *

It was twilight when I left, and I made my usual detour around our
hamlet. Outside the village and just beyond the school-house, in a
little cottage whose diamond windows are almost hidden under green
creepers, lived Alice Moylan, the head monitress in our little school. I
rather liked Alice, for when she was a little child of seven years, she
gave me an idea of something for which I had been long seeking. It was a
few years back, when I had not laid up my pen finally, but still
retained the belief, with a certain author, that "there is no greater
mental excitement, and scarcely a sweeter one, than when a young man
strides up and down his room, and boldly resolves to take a quire of
writing paper and turn it into a manuscript." And in these latter days
of life I still sought for a vision of our Lady, which I could keep
before my imagination when writing certain things in her honor. Now
(perhaps I have already said it), I had a peculiar devotion to the
Child-Virgin of the Temple and of the House of Nazareth, where in the
noontide the Archangel entered and spoke his solemn words. And I never
said the _Magnificat_ but on my knees and with a full heart, as I
thought on the Child-Prophetess of Hebron and the wondering aged saints.
But I sought her face everywhere in vain--in pictures, in the faces of
my little children; but not one came up to my ideal of what the little
maiden of the Temple and Nazareth was like. At last, one day, little
Alice came, and in her sweet oval face, and calm, entreating eyes and
raven hair, subdued beneath such a dainty frilled headdress, I saw our
Blessed Lady and wondered and was glad. And in those days of her simple
childhood, before the awful dawn of self-consciousness, I used drea