or which, in defiance of traditional custom on the part of its worshippers, he persisted in calling the parish churchthereby causing continual confusion in local converse. He did this regularly Sunday by Sunday, having been first oareful to explain to Timothy Feehan and other friends of that sort that every form of denominational religion was equally meaningless to him, and that dogmatic belief of any kind was powerless to subjugate his reason or his heart. I do not suppose for a moment that Timothy had the faintest idea of what dogma denomination meant, but even if he indulged in any conjeotures as to their meaning, they would doubtless have led him to the conclusion at which, with or without conjecture, he had had no difficulty in arriving -namely, that the Crusader, whatever he might choose to say, was a Protestant. The sight of a Protestant-from England, too-bending the knee before the Most Sacred Mystery of his Faith, was far from pleasing to Timothy, or to a people whose Faith is at once the passion and pride of their souls and the fiercely contested possession of centuries. The very sincerity of the Crusader's intentions only served for his undoing. He burned to show "sympathy" with what he regarded as these deluded but downtrodden folk, ridden rough-shod, as he fervently declaimed, by a Government alien in religion, race, and outlook, How could he know that such sympathy coming from him stank in their nostrils as the very fumes of treachery! was "What call has the like o' him to be coming to the chapel at all?" was the comment with which his good intent assailed; "would he put a foot in it if he wasn't up to no good? Let him go to his own church that there's ready for him." As a matter of fact, the Crusader disliked the Church of Ireland service because it was too Protestant. I ventured to say this to Timothy. "Too Protestant!" he repeated sceptically; "'faith, that's quare talk for any wan that's a Protestant theirselves." And there is no doubt that this was the prevailing view. Even old Mrs Doherty, whose whole simple life was a personification of the charity which is kind, was severely pooh-poohed when with her gentle piety she tried to put the best construction upon it. "Yees may be talkin', but who knows but may be the Lord and His Blessed Mother has put it in his heart to come to the Truth." "'Arrah, go on out o' that with ye"-Timothy's robustly practical suspiciousness rose above his remembrance of that bargain for the moment,-"the Lord has ne'er a hand's-turn in it. Divil a bit. 'Tis going round he is looking for what he can see, and that's the whole of it all." "Meself," interposed Mrs Timothy Feehan, "lived with Protestants in service for sixteen years, and very good people and nice people they were; ye couldn't fault 'em; but if they'd have took to coming to Mass I'd have left them, for I'd know there was something in it that wasn't right. But the like of them real ould gentry 'd never do a thing like that, to be making a mock of us. They would not. An' what I like "-the speaker made a vehement and sweeping gesture-"is the people that live up to their religion and leave others to live up to theirs. Them's the good people and the nice people, and them goes on with no nonsense and no fantigues; an' didn't th' ould masther give the grand site for the new chapel? ay, 'faith, an' he the blackest Protestant in three counties: that's the right sort, I say. But I wouldn't think much of this fella with the bare knees of him. 'Twould give ye a turn to see them in the holy Church; an' mark my words, ye'll find him out yet." "Augh, woman dear, whisht with yer chat; sure ye know no more o' the worrld than a spancelled goat." Timothy was by no means unimpressed by his wife's opinion, but he felt bound to dissent from it, as being hers; for in Ireland, however deep our devotion to Peter, we are whole-heartedly Pauline in our acceptance of that Apostle's pronouncements upon the feminist question in general, and with regard to wives in particular. "What would you know of the like o' him? Hasn't he the right to do what he fancies, no fancies, no matter what he is! Bedad, his money's good, anny way. Didn't Clanoy tell me he puts half-a-crown on the plate every time he sets foot inside the chapel door, and another as often as not for the poor, let alone a shillin' as well for the holy souls; and he give five shillin's for the dues; where would ye get the like o' that in this place? Sure, ould Billy Keane, that's the biggest publican between this and Dublin, wouldn't do betther nor that-no, nor half as good, maybe, if the truth known, for he's a real naygur [Timothy meant miser, but that is our local phrase for it], and the same could be said for many a wan that's nearer to us, too." was The significanoe with which this was said reduced Mrs Timothy to silence, if not acquiescence, it being well known that her family were "that mane, sure they'd skin a flea for the bones and fat"; while, according to Timothy, he had been done out of ten pounds of the dowry agreed to by his prospective fatherin-law after he had "preferred marriage to herself." His view may and no doubt was also influenced by the fact that the Crusader, having purchased his tumbledown cabin, had set about restoring and enlarging it in a manner that not only rendered it possible for a civilised being to live in, but gave a good deal of employment as well. Timothy, who owned a cart and a spavined mare, discovered a little gold - mine in drawing stones for the new building. He had therefore no object in driving the source of such wealth to another neighbourhood. In course of time there arose upon the ruin a fair-sized cottage, which, after further embellishment by a Dublin firm of decorators and furnishers, proved a comfortable if modest bachelor abode, and herein the Crusader dwelt. His retinue consisted of Mrs Timothy Feehan, who, with traditions of sixteen years' service with "the highest in the land," proved equal to providing three solid meals a day for his sustenance, together with a boy for the garden, who slept in, cleaned boots and knives indifferently -performed other menial duties unnecessary to specify, and was ordered about by Mrs Timothy with a sultanio arrogance of which perhaps only, those who also serve are capable towards their subordinates. It was about this time when, his energies no longer absorbed by house-building, and being somewhat at a loose end, the Crusader fell in with the Irish language. It may be recalled that some years ago a band of enthusiasts, instigated thereto and headed by a German professor, had discovered a great literature somewhere in exist ence and written in the socalled Irish language. Fired by the German professor, who went about declaiming with all the weight of his Teutonic oulture and authority (then very great amongst us) that this treasure of ancient Irish literature far surpassed the works of comparative barbarians, such as Homer for example; and that modern degenerates like Shakespeare and Milton were not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the authors of 'Cuhuelain' and 'Deirdre,' and the 'Dan Cow'-a band of worthy, intelligent, and even well-educated persons (mostly ladies) set themselves in all haste to learn the Irish language, in order to taste the sweetness of this fabulous treasure. Some among these amiable enthusiasts were indeed not a little inflamed by the statement, reiterated with much force by their Teutonic guide, that the base and soulless English Government had for some reason difficult to discover-crushed, suppressed, and hid for centuries-somewhere the unsurpassable and glorious literature of ancient Ireland. Herein was the German professor justified of his guile, for any one who has even the slightest acquaintance of Ireland will readily understand what a fillip such a charge would give to a supposedly national study, even though it was unsupported by any evidence other than the word of a German. From various causes, however,-one of which was the difficulty which its votaries found in mastering it, and another the interruption and cessation (for reasons hardly necessary to recapitulate) of the professor's visits to Ireland, the movement had somewhat waned before the day when the Crusader leaped into the Celtic Twilight, or, to or, to be him, for, God help him! he has plain, returned from Dublin no wit no more than a newwith a trunk-load, carted from born child, but he's the heart's the station by Timothy's blood of a gentleman in the spavined mare, of grammars, latther end.' dictionaries, and various other (modern) works wherewith to begin his acquisition of the Irish. It may be placed to the credit of the Irish language that its pursuit kept him quiet for several months. But by the time he was able to read slowly some of the easier text, the crusading spirit awoke in him again with a violence doubtless due to its recent suppression. Its first expression was to accost every one in Irish and to refuse to utter a word of English. He began on the nearest object, otherwise "the boy." The boy, transfixed, reported that "the masther was talkin' French and the divil a worrd ye could understand," while being Irish and at the sensitive age of fifteen, he was very huffy at being addressed in a tongue which he could neither speak nor understand, and thereby of course made to look ridiculous. The Crusader next treated Mrs Timothy Feehan to his new accomplishment. She returned home and expressed fears for his sanity. "Believe you me," she remarked impressively to her lord, "I wouldn't oare a ha'porth if it was only to the boy he'd be talkin' like that; but when he went and let out a sthream of gibberish at meself, I give ye me worrd the heart lep' out o' me with the dread; an' d'ye know, I'd be sorry if it was to happen to Ours is not, and has not been for more than a century, an Irish-speaking distriot; it is one in which the "League,” not the Gaelic League, reigned supreme, and the arbiters of the policy of the Land League had not espoused the language question with with any special ardour. That, however, was a matter of which either the Crusader was ignorant or incapable of grasping. Moreever, it was ever his way to run ahead of the Irish themselves in patriotic fervency. The language, he declared, must live again amongst us. Nothing could alter his fixed opinion on that point. That the language would be of no practical use in a world where it had ceased to exist as a living speech influenced him not an iota; he was equally impervious to the unconcealed indifference with which his orusade was met. On the contrary, so pertinacious was his spirit and so buoyant his hopes, that he insisted upon his correspondents addressing his letters in Gaelic oharaoters, and spelling his name in accordance with a Gaelio counterpart of it, which he had himself invented; which led to no result more important than unpleasantness at the local post office, the latter naturally resenting an innovation which entailed confusion and consequent irritation. Indeed, his unbalanced zeal in this evoked a fresh spurt of suspicion in the breast of the village, especially when, with his characteristic perspicacity, and stung by the opposition which at last even he could hardly fail to see, he threw out hints to Timothy of his intention to approach the Government inspector of schools on the question of compulsory Irish. That roused even Timothy Feehan. "Let him go on now," he said warningly, "and be puttin' Governmint on us an' it'll be the worse for him. The Lord knows we've no objection to him as long as he's quiet and easy, but to be talkin' of drawin' down trouble on us that way is no work for a gentleman to be doin' on poor people." "We want no Irish put on us," was actually yelled at him by the children as they came out of school; "go on out o' that, you and yer ould Irish, and leave us alone"; while the boy refused to hear if spoken to in the ancient tongue of his country, and Mrs Timothy Feehan, getting no sympathy from her husband, confided her apprehensions to old Mrs Doherty, "that she was in dread maybe the fella's would 'do' something on him if he'd be going on talkin' like that much longer." This was the pass to which the matter had come when there entered into our cirole THE FEMALE CRUSADER. The female Crusader was English also. She, too, arrived hot-foot from England; but unlike the male Crusader, her object in seeking Ireland was 80 not that of Ireland's development, but her own. She was in fact one of those young women, of whom there are many in these days, who cannot get on with their mothers. Unlike their less fortunate predecessors, these young women no sooner discover that lamentable condition than they make haste to leave their mothers, and find no difficulty in doing so. There are now, thanks to the expansion of woman's opportunities, obligingly granted to her by man, many ways by which young women so desiring can escape from their mothers and achieve "careers." Twenty years or more ago the female Crusader would have developed herself or "lived her own life" in the only way open to persons like her-namely, between the four walls of some well-known hospital; to-day the avenues are vastly multiplied. One such avenue opened just outside our village. A lady, left with a place about three sizes too big for her income, conceived the happy thought of setting up a college of gardening for gentlewomen. To this college the Crusader came. Her choice of Ireland for the "avenue" was partly her own, but-though they were wise enough to conceal it from her-in greater measure by her parents, who, advised by Irish friends, came to the conclusion, and rightly, that in certain respects she would be safer there than in other countries, and in this, if in nothing else, succeeded in oarrying their point. |