phesied that not one of his succession should remain. But why
the saint thus did the prince marvelled, and unto him the man of God
delayed not to declare the mystery nor the cause thereof. Then did he
the more earnestly entreat the saint that at least he would in some
other manner vouchsafe to bless the woman and her offspring. And
Patrick, raising his right hand, blessed her, and said: "The infant
which thou bearest in thy womb shall not reign, for the word that in
the name of the Lord I have spoken on Coirbre and on his seed shall
stand fixed; yet shall he be one of the chiefs of the land, and very
needful shall he be unto the king and unto the kingdom." And what the
saint foretold without doubt happened.

CHAPTER CII.

_The Bishop Saint Mel catcheth Fishes on the Dry Land._

And the aforementioned Mel, a man of exceeding desert, who with his
most holy brothers, Munius and Kiochus, had come from Britannia unto
Hibernia, being promoted by Saint Patrick himself unto the episcopal
degree, became the assistant in the preaching. And he, like the
Apostle Paul, labored to live by the labor of his own hands; and what
was given unto him by the rich bestowed he on the poor. And with this
blessed man, as being her nephew, Lupita, the sister of Saint Patrick,
abided in one house (for such was the custom of the primitive church),
that by his conversation and example she might profit in the exercise
of all holy duties. And after some time had passed, when the pious
prelate, as he was wont, would arise in the middle of the night to
confess unto the Lord, this holy woman would compose herself to sleep
and cover herself with the skins in his bed. And they suspected not
that any evil suspicion would be formed thereof, for they accounted of
the minds of others from the purity of their own conscience. But some
one, holding this her familiarity with the bishop to be naught,
divulged it abroad. And as the tongue of the people is ever open unto
the spreading of scandal, it could not long lie hidden from Saint
Patrick. Then he, desiring to try whether so the matter was, repaired
unto the house of the bishop. But Mel, preferring to prove his
innocence by a token rather than by an oath, ploughed up the earth on a
certain hill, and took by the ploughshare many and large fishes out of
the dry land; and these he offered unto the saint as a miracle, that no
suspicion might continue in the beholders, inasmuch as such a token
co