nd the church stood the
school he had attended as a boy, whitewashed without and draped inside
with maps and illuminated texts. A salary, not princely but sufficient,
was voted to Mr. Conneally, and he was given authority over a
Scripture-reader and a schoolmaster. The whole group of mission
buildings--the rectory, the church, and the school--stood, like types
of the uncompromising spirit of Protestantism, upon the bare hillside,
swept by every storm, battered by the Atlantic spray. Below them
Carrowkeel, the village, cowered in such shelter as the sandhills
afforded. Eastward lonely cottages, faintly smoking dots in the
landscape, straggled away to the rugged bases of the mountains. The
Rev. AEneas Conneally entered upon his mission enthusiastically, and
the London committee awaited results. There were scarcely any results,
certainly none that could be considered satisfactory. The day for making
conversions was past, and the tide had set decisively against the new
reformation. A national school, started by a clearsighted priest, in
spite of his Archbishop, left the mission school almost without pupils.
The Scripture-reader lost heart, and took to seeking encouragement
in the public-house. He found it, and once when exalted--he said,
spiritually--paraded the streets cursing the Virgin Mary. Worse
followed, and the committee in London dismissed the man. A diminishing
income forced on them the necessity of economy, and no successor was
appointed. For a few years Mr. Conneally laboured on. Then a sharp-eyed
inspector from London discovered that the schoolmaster took very little
trouble about teaching, but displayed great talent in prompting his
children at examinations. He, too, was dismissed, and the committee,
still bent on economy, appointed a mistress in his place. She was a
pretty girl, and after she had shivered through the stormy nights of
two winters in the lonely school-house, Mr. Conneally married her.
Afterwards the office of school-teacher was also left vacant. The
whitewashed school fell gradually into decay, and the committee effected
a further saving.

After his marriage Mr. Conneally's missionary enthusiasm began to flag.
His contact with womanhood humanized him. The sternness of the reformer
died in him, and his neighbours, who never could comprehend his
religion, came to understand the man. They learned to look upon him as a
friend, to seek his sympathy and help. In time they learnt to love him.

Two ye