ars passed, and a son was born. The village people crowded upon
him with congratulations, and mothers of wide experience praised the boy
till Mrs. Conneally's heart swelled in her with pride. He was christened
Hyacinth, after a great pioneer and leader of the mission work. The
naming was Mr. Conneally's act of contrition for the forsaking of
his enthusiasm, his recognition of the value of a zeal which had not
flagged. Failing the attainment of greatness, the next best thing is to
dedicate a new life to a patron saint who has won the reward of those
who endure to the end. For two years more life in the glebe house was
rapturously happy. Such bliss has in it, no doubt, an element of sin,
and it is not good that it should endure. This was to be seen afterwards
in calmer times, though hardly at the moment when the break came. There
was a hope of a second child, a delightful time of expectation; then an
accident, the blighting of the hope, and in a few days the death of Mrs.
Conneally. Her husband buried her, digging the first grave in the rocky
ground that lay around the little church.

For a time Mr. Conneally was stunned by his sorrow. He stopped working
altogether, ceased to think, even to feel. Men avoided him with
instinctive reverence at first, and afterwards with fear, as he
wandered, muttering to himself, among the sandhills and along the beach.
After a while the power of thought and a sense of the outward things of
life returned to him. He found that an aged crone from the village had
established herself in his house, and was caring for Hyacinth. He let
her stay, and according to her abilities she cooked and washed for him
and the boy, neither asking wages nor taking orders from him, until she
died.

Hyacinth grew and throve amazingly. From morning till evening he was in
the village, among the boats beside the little pier, or in the fields,
when the men worked there. Everyone petted and loved him, from Father
Moran, the priest who had started the national school, down to old
Shamus, the crippled singer of interminable Irish songs and teller of
heroic legends of the past. It was when he heard the boy repeat a story
of Finn MacCool to the old crone in the kitchen that Mr. Conneally awoke
to the idea that he must educate his son. He began, naturally enough,
with Irish, for it was Irish, and not English, that Hyacinth spoke
fluently.

Afterwards the English alphabet followed, though not for the sake of
reading books