Peg O My Heart | Page 5

the village of M--in County Clare. But of late there was
a growing feeling of discontent among the younger generation. They

lacked the respect their elders so willingly gave. They asked questions
instead of answering them. They began to throw themselves, against
Father Cahill's express wishes and commands, into the fight for Home
Rule under the masterly statesmanship of Charles Stuart Parnell.
Already more than one prominent speaker had come into the little
village and sown the seeds of temporal and spiritual unrest. Father
Cahill opposed these men to the utmost of his power. He saw, as so
many far-sighted priests did, the legacy of bloodshed and desolation
that would follow any direct action by the Irish against the British
Government. Though the blood of the patriot beat in Father Cahill's
veins, the well-being of the people who had grown up with him was
near to his heart. He was their Priest and he could not bear to think of
men he had known as children being beaten and maimed by
constabulary, and sent to prison afterwards, in the, apparently, vain
fight for self-government.
To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most
notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the little
village.
O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest
regrets. He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had taken
care of the boy as well as he could. But at the age of fifteen the youth
left the village, that had so many wretched memories of hardship and
struggle, and worked his way to Dublin. It was many years before
Father Cahill heard of him again. He had developed meanwhile into
one of the most daring of all the fervid speakers in the sacred Cause of
Liberty. Many were the stories told of his narrow escapes from death
and imprisonment. He always had the people on his side, and once
away from the hunt, he would hide in caves, or in mountains, until the
hue and cry was over, and then appear in some totally unexpected town
and call on the people to act in the name of Freedom.
And that was exactly what happened on this particular day. He had
suddenly appeared in the town he was born in and called a meeting on
St. Kernan's Hill that afternoon.
It was this meeting Father Cahill was determined to stop by every

means in his power.
He could hardly believe that this tall, bronzed, powerful young man
was the Frank O'Connell he had watched about the village, as a boy--
pale, dejected, and with but little of the fire of life in him. Now as he
stood before Father Cahill and looked him straight through with his
piercing eye, shoulders thrown back, and head held high, he looked
every inch a born leader of men, and just for a moment the priest
quailed. But only for a moment.
"Not a member of my flock will attend yer meetin' to-day. Not a door
will open this day. Ye can face the constabulary yerself and the few of
the rabble that'll follow ye. But none of my God-fearin' people will risk
their lives and their liberty to listen to you."
O'Connell looked at him strangely. A far-away glint came into his eye,
and the suspicion of a tear, as he answered:
"Sure it's precious little they'd be riskin', Father Cahill; havin' NO
liberty and their lives bein' of little account to them."
O'Connell sighed as the thought of his fifteen years of withered youth
in that poor little village came up before him.
"Let my people alone, I tell ye!" cried the priest. "It's contented they've
been until the likes of you came amongst us."
"Then they must have been easily satisfied," retorted O'Connell, "to
judge by their poor little homes and their drab little lives."
"A hovel may be a palace if the Divine Word is in it," said the priest.
"Sure it's that kind of tachin' keeps Ireland the mockery of the whole
world. The Divine Word should bring Light. It's only darkness I find in
this village," argued O'Connell.
"I've given my life to spreadin' the Light!" said the priest.
A smile hovered on O'Connell's lips as he muttered:

"Faith, then, I'm thinkin' it must be a DARK-LANTERN yer usin', yer
riverence."
"Is that the son of Michael O'Connell talkin'?"
Suddenly the smile left O'Connell's lips, the sneer died on his tongue,
and with a flash of power that turned to white heat before he finished,
he attacked the priest with:
"Yes, it is! It is the son of Michael O'Connell who died on the roadside
and was buried by the charity of his neighbours. Michael O'Connell,
born in the image of God, who lived eight-and-fifty years