She was more than patient with me, though my spiritual conceit must have given her many a pang. Antrim was just beginning to get accustomed to my new habiliments of boots, boiled linen and hat when I left to "push my fortune" in other parts. My enthusiasm had its good qualities too, and she was quick to recognize them, quicker than to notice its blemishes. My last hours in the town—on the eve of my first departure—I spent with her. "I feel about you, dear," she said, laughing, "as Micky Free did about the soul of his father in Purgatory. He had been payin' for masses for what seemed to him an uncommonly long time. 'How's th' oul bhoy gettin' on?' Micky asked the priest. 'Purty well, Micky, his head is out.' 'Begorra, thin, I know th' rist ov 'im will be out soon—I'll pay for no more masses!' Your head is up and out from the bottom of th' world, and I haave faith that ye'll purty soon be all out, an' some day ye'll get the larger view, for ye'll be in a larger place an' ye'll haave seen more of people an' more of the world."
I have two letters of that period. One I wrote her from Jerusalem in the year 1884. As I read the yellow, childish epistle I am stung with remorse that it is full of the narrow sectarianism that still held me in its grip. The other is dated Antrim, July, 1884, and is her answer to my sectarian appeal.
"Dear boy," she says, "Antrim has had many soldier sons in far-off lands, but you are the first, I think, to have the privilege of visiting the Holy Land. Jamie and I are proud of you. All the old friends have read your letter. They can hardly believe it. Don't worry about our souls. When we come one by one in the twilight of life, each of us, Jamie and I, will have our sheaves. They will be little ones, but we are little people. I want no glory here or hereafter that Jamie cannot share. I gave God a plowman, but your father says I must chalk half of that to his account. Hold tight the handles and plow deep. We watch the candle and every wee spark thrills our hearts, for we know it's a letter from you.
"Your loving mother."
CHAPTER IX
"BEYOND TH' MEADOWS AN' TH' CLOUDS"
hen the bill-boards announced that I was to deliver a lecture on "England in the Soudan" in the only hall in the town, Antrim turned out to satisfy its curiosity. "How doth this man know, not having learned," the wise ones said, for when I shook the dust of its blessed streets from my brogues seven years previously I was an illiterate.