"This is a wonderful, and a very wonderful story," said the principal, "but, do you wait here quietly my son," said he, "and I shall write to the bishop." He did that, and he got an account from the bishop to keep the man until he should come himself.
At the end of a week after that the bishop came and sent for Patrick O'Flynn. There was nobody present except the two. "Now, son," said the bishop, "go on your knees and make a confession." Then he made an act of contrition, and the bishop gave him absolution. Immediately there came a fainting and a heavy sleep over him, and he was, as it were, for three days and three nights a dead person. When he came to himself the bishop and priests were round about him. He rose up, shook himself, and told them his story, as I have it told, and he put excessive wonder upon every man of them. "Now," said he, "here I am alive and safe, and do as ye please."
The bishop and the priests took counsel together. "It is a saintly man you are," said the bishop then, "and we shall give you holy orders on the spot."
They made a priest of him then, and no sooner were holy orders given him than he fell dead upon the altar, and they all heard at the same time the most melodious music that ear ever listened to, above them in the sky, and they all said that it was the angels who were in it, carrying the soul of Father O'Flynn up to heaven with them.
THE HELP OF GOD IN THE ROAD.
PREFACE.
This story was written down by my friend, C. M. Hodgson, from the mouth of one of his brother tenants, James Mac Donough, near Oughterard, in Connemara. Mac Donough called it "Conal, King of the Cats." In a Kerry version of this story it is a poor scholar and a thief who make the bet as to whether honesty or roguery is the best for a man to follow. The people they meet give it in favour of the thief. The poor scholar loses everything, eventually his two eyes. His going under the tombstone is properly motivated by saying that he meant to die there and would then be buried and have a tombstone. The rest of the story is pretty much the same as ours. My friend, the late Patrick O'Leary, found a story called the "Three Crows," something like this, where the crows talk as the cats do in our story, and where they end by picking out the two bad men's eyes, but there is no bet made, the man is simply robbed and blinded for no particular reason.