66 Why have you been afraid of me Krishna until to-day? Look straight into my eyes and tell me.' I gazed straight into their blue depths, and what I saw there caused me to sink down upon my knees, and open my drill coat. "Because of this, holy father!" I gasped. He saw the locket, and put out his hand. Snapping the soiled ribbon in twain, I handed him my treasure. In a moment all my bright, interior light went out: I burned no more. Father Adrian took the locket. He laid it reverently beneath the crucifix; and, kneeling, kissed it. Presently, clasping it to his bosom he left the room, and passed into the church, murmuring words which I did not understand. As for me, I remained where I was. He was to be my teacher and my master. It seemed to me now that I had always foreseen this, and hitherto rebelled. Now I submitted joyfully, and awaited his return like a faithful dog. When he reappeared the monk spoke to me most kindly. I told him all my story, and how I came to possess the locket; and all that it had come to be, and to mean, to me. His blue eyes shone happily as he listened to the recital. He made arrangements for me to join his class for catechumens; and said he was sure I should soon be baptized. At last he rose indicating that I was dismissed, yet still I lingered saying: "I've got to be your reverence's servant: I don't belong to anyone but you, father." He told me to return to Martin, and go on with my work. "Later on you may perhaps be my servant: we shall see,' said he quietly. I obeyed him. I knew that one day he would be my master. I was drawn to him and felt his power. I ran home; and as I trotted on, I wept; it was so lonely now without my Friend. Fatherless and forsaken, I longed for consolation. Little Juli was in the dining-room with master. He had finished his dinner and was giving dessert to her when I ran panting on to the verandah. The child cried out as soon as she saw me: 66 Come in Krishna !” I salaamed and she noticed my reddened eyes. "Krishna has been crying!" she exclaimed. "Poor boy! May I give him some sweeties daddy?" "Come, chokra," said master, "why have you turned up too late to wait at table? Butler will scold you!" "I am going to be made a Christian, sir," I blurted out, "I stayed behind to speak to Father Adrian.” Juli clapped her hands, crying: "How lovely Krishna! But, do you know, you do not feel so holy as you used to feel. I wonder why. Never mind, you'll get holy very soon." Then I told master how I longed to be Father Adrian's servant. "Well," he replied good-naturedly, "I am going home in the spring with missie, and then you can go and wait on Father Adrian. Now run away and tell Martin why you were late." CHAPTER XIV. I was baptized on Holy Saturday, and I made my first real Communion on Easter Day. Immediately after I entered Father Adrian's service. Master and missie went home together to Scotland; Martin and ayah found another situation, and so did cook. Our master did not intend to return to Tiroderam: he had earned a pension, and was glad to go away: the place was not the same now that our little missus was no more. Father Adrian was very good to me. He encouraged the reading of sacred books, and taught me to pray; to live on holy lines and help him in pious works. My love for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament-that devotion which was first given to me within the rest-house upon the dacoity road-grew hourly and daily deeper and stronger. When I was fourteen years old Father Adrian allowed me to try my vocation in religion: four years ago I entered this College to be trained as a missionary for Indian service. My love for the Blessed Eucharist became the absorbing passion of my life and soul; one day, indeed, I prayed our dear Lord' and Friend to let me sacrifice my life for the Sacred Host: to be Its happy martyr. You know the way in which my petition has been granted; and that I am indeed now dying for the Holy Eucharist. You know how ruffians dared to attack the Tabernacle, and how I was permitted by Heaven to defend it; to save the Sacred Host from their mad malice. And now I lie here joyously dying of the wounds I then received when blows were rained upon me. How good it was of God to grant me my earnest wish: to give me the blood-stained Cross shewn to me in my childhood's vision of the Boy Jesus. Maybe the martyr's crown awaits me now in heaven, and that Our Lord will hereafter place it upon the brows of His poor, unworthy, but loving slave Christopher. The End. A MOTHER By NORA TYNAN O'MAHONY ALWAYS think of her as being part of the Spring, and of the soft, warm, lovely days of April; with the daffodils dancing on the lawn, and the lilac trees bursting into bud, and the red and yellow wallflowers making a golden and copper-coloured crown of fragrance along the ancient creviced tops of the low, white-washed, mossgrown garden walls. One can see her now, with that incomparably sweet smile of hers, breaking into radiance over her mobile, delicately beautiful features and kind grey eyes as she came to give one greeting, stirred for a moment out of her usual quiet, gracious, matronly dignity into an almost girlish eagerness and gaiety of aspect. And what a haven of rest it seemed to turn one's back on the hot and smoke-grimed city for an hour, and pass in from the white and dusty road to the cool green quiet and peace of those dewy, flower-scented fields, with the great old hospitable white house smiling down at one, as it were, in cheery, open-portalled welcome! Never seemed there a meadow more fragrant and flowerfilled than the one that lined each side of the sweeping, wellkept avenue to the house. There were daisies, large and small, dandelions and clover-blossom, cowslips and wild orchis, celandine and ground ivy and ladysmock, all bedecking the soft green turf with their gold and white and their purple-blossomed loveliness. Yet earlier in Spring the field had been a very riot of blue and white hyacinths, of yellow and golden daffodils and narcissi-such quantities of them, and in every known variety! I recall the delight with which my hostess-the "Mother" whose manifold beauties of character and personality I here seek faintly to retrace used to tell of how one day she discovered an intruding city "basket-woman " quite coolly plucking bunch after bunch of the riotous, gailynodding yellow trumpet heads, right in front of the halldoor. On being gently remonstrated with the woman said, with an almost injured air: "An' why wouldn't I pluck them, ma'am, an' they growin' wild like that all over the place!" 66 It was to my dear friend Father Matt" Russell that I owed primarily amongst so many other kindnesses and benefactions—the privilege of this dear "Mother's" acquaintance and friendship—a friendship that rapidly ripened, I am proud to think on both sides, into a very warm and enduring affection. From the first moment that I met her-doubtless at first because I had introduced myself on kind "Father Matt's" credentials-she seemed to take me completely and at once to her motherly arms and heart. I am reminded again of Father Russell by her first name, which was "Annie." Somewhere in the Irish Monthly he referred to an "Annie" who "like all Annies," was good and kind and gentle. In one of the "Idylls of Killowen,' "The Irish Children's First Communion," he also refers to the same patronymic. "And here a curious fancy crosses me, 66 Which Muse less homely would austerely smother- Our Annie" was certainly “gentle and fair"; meek too, save when anything of real wrong-doing or injustice towards others came under her notice, when she could speak out her opinion of such things with no uncertain note, and with just the faintest possible heightening of the wild-rose colour that tinged her pale and transparently clear soft cheeks. Not that anything of the sort was likely to come into her immediate surroundings—for, thank God, she moved in a very placid and pleasant milieu, as was evident from the look of gentle, holy happiness and "the peace that passeth understanding' that shone perpetually in her quiet grey eyes. Not that she was completely without her trials-what earthly woman,--above all, what earthly mother, is? They came to her in the deaths of more than one or two out of her large family of devoted and highly exemplary children— most of all, perhaps, in the early loss, just as he was about to be ordained, of one of the cleverest and best of her good and clever sons. But she was very Irish and Catholic in her complete resignation. What God willed must surely be for the best! So she put her sorrow away from her, at least outwardly, lest the sight of her grief might wound and trouble unduly the hearts of the many dear ones still mercifully left to her, her devoted husband, her dear daughter in the Carmelite Convent near by, her good, manly sons, the married daughters and daughter-in-law and little grand-children whose advent had brought such a new wave of brightness and life into the big roomy house, that might now have perhaps felt lonely and full of too sad-sweet memories, were it not for the God-given gift of their coming. It always seemed to me the happiest, homeliest, most friendly and welcoming house in the world. There appeared |