"Ah, well, try some sensible saint. Try now St. Bernard. He was a wise, gentle adviser."
I turned to St. Bernard, and read:—
"Lingua magniloqua—manus otiosa!
Sermo multus—fructus nullus!
Vultus gravis—actus levis!
Ingens auctoritas—nutans stabilitas!"
That hit my friend between the eyes. The auguries were inauspicious. He took up his hat.
"You are not going?" said I, reaching for the bell. "I am just sending for Father Letheby to let you see how I can cuff him—"
"I—I—must be going," he said; "I have a sick-call—that is—an engagement—I—er—expect a visitor—will call again. Good day."
"Stay and have a glass of wine!" I said.
"No, no, many thanks; the mare is young and rather restive. Au revoir!"
"Au revoir!" I replied, as I took up my hat and gold-headed cane and set out to interview and reprimand my curate. Clearly, something should be done, and done quickly. There was a good deal of talk abroad, and I was supposed to be sinking into a condition of senile incompetence. It is quite true that I could not challenge my curate's conduct in a single particular. He was in all things a perfect exemplar of a Christian priest, and everything he had done in the parish since his arrival contributed to the elevation of the people and the advancement of religion. But it wouldn't do. Every one said so; and, of course, every one in these cases is right. And yet there was some secret misgiving in my mind that I should do violence to my own conscience were I to check or forbid Father Letheby's splendid work; and there came a voice from my own dead past to warn me: "See that you are not opposing the work of the right hand of the Most High."
These were my doubts and apprehensions as I moved slowly along the road that led in a circuitous manner around the village and skirted the path up to the school-house. I woke from my unpleasant reverie to hear the gentle murmur of voices, moving rhythmically as in prayer; and in a short bend of the road I came face to face with the children leaving school. I had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy, leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then—anarchy, as before. Today they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, three by three, and all chanting in a sweet, low tone—the Rosary. The centre girl was the coryphæus with the "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys"; the others, the chorus. I stood still in amazement and challenged them:—