d of Mary_. She never took it
upon herself to lecture me about God, but I could read her thoughts in
her countenance. When she prayed, every morning and night, her
countenance beamed with faith and charity; when she returned from the
church, where she had received, with a calmness, a sweetness and a
patience, which had in them something of the serenity of heaven, she
seemed an angel. When she dressed my wounds I found her like a Sister of
Charity.

"Suddenly, I myself was taken with the desire to love the God whom my
wife loved so well, and who inspired her with those virtues which formed
the joy of my life. One day I, who hitherto was without faith, who was
such a complete stranger to the practices of religion, so far from the
Sacraments, said to her: 'Take me to your confessor.'

"Through the ministry of this man of God, and by the divine grace, I
have become what I am, and what I rejoice to be."

Dead Man's Island.

THE STORY OF AN IRISH COUNTRY TOWN.

T. P. O'CONNOR, M. P.

CHAPTER XIX.

MAT BECOMES A FENIAN.

Shortly before this, the Widow Cunningham had received the news that her
poor boy had been killed in a colliery accident in Pennsylvania. This
stopped the allowance which he used to send her out of his own scant
wages.

The destruction of her daughter now came as the last blow that broke her
long-enduring spirit. There had been a time when she would have died
rather than have gone into the workhouse, but she had nothing left to
live for now, and she became a pauper. The Irish workhouse soon kills
what little spirit successive misfortunes have left in its occupants
before their entrance, and in a few years there was nothing left of the
once proud, high-spirited and splendid woman, whom we knew in the early
days of this history.

Meantime, the fate of the girl had been the final influence in deciding
the fate of another person. Mat Blake had fluctuated for a long time
before he could make up his mind to join the revolutionary party; but on
the very evening of the day on which he had seen Betty in the streets of
Ballybay he made no further resistance, and that night was sworn in as a
member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

It is not my purpose in this story to enter at length into his
adventures in his new and perilous enterprise. He had not been long in
the ranks when he was recognized by Mr. James Stephens as one of the
most promising members of the conspiracy, and he was chose