Peg O My Heart | Page 6

of torment
and starvation and sickness and misery! Michael O'Connell, who was
thrown out from a bed of fever, by order of his landlord, to die in sight
of where he was born. It's his son is talkin', Father Cahill, and it's his
son WILL talk while there's breath in his body to keep his tongue
waggin'. It's a precious legacy of hatred Michael O'Connell left his son,
and there's no priest, no government, no policeman or soldier will kape
that son from spendin' his legacy."
The man trembled from head to foot with the nervous intensity of his
attack. Everything that had been outraged in him all his life came
before him.
Father Cahill began to realise as he watched him the secret of the
tremendous appeal the man had to the suffering people. Just for a
moment the priest's heart went out to O'Connell, agitator though he
was.
"Your father died with all the comforts of the Holy Church," said the
priest gently, as he put his old hand the young man's shoulder.
"The comforts of the church!" scoffed O'Connell. "Praise be to heaven
for that!" He laughed a grim, derisive laugh as he went on:
"Sure it's the fine choice the Irish peasant has to-day. 'Stones and dirt
are good enough for them to eat,' sez the British government. 'Give
them prayers,' say the priests. And so they die like flies in the highways

and hedges, but with 'all the comforts of the Holy Church'!"
Father Cahill's voice thrilled with indignation as he said:
"I'll not stand and listen to ye talk that way, Frank O'Connell."
"I've often noticed that those who are the first to PREACH truth are the
last to LISTEN to it," said the agitator drily.
"Where would Ireland be to-day but for the priest? Answer me that.
Where would she be? What has my a here been? I accepted the yoke of
the Church when I was scarcely your age. I've given my life to serving
it. To help the poor, and to keep faith and love for Him in their hearts.
To tache the little children and bring them up in the way of God. I've
baptised them when their eyes first looked out on this wurrld of
sorrows. I've given them in marriage, closed their eyes in death, and
read the last message to Him for their souls. And there are thousands
more like me, giving their lives to their little missions, trying to kape
the people's hearts clean and honest, so that their souls may go to Him
when their journey is ended."
Father Cahill took a deep breath as he finished. He had indeed summed
up his life's work. He had given it freely to his poor little flock. His
only happiness had been in ministering to their needs. And now to have
one to whom he had taught his first prayer, heard his first confession
and given him his first Holy Communion speak scoffingly of the priest,
hurt him as nothing else could hurt and bruise him.
The appeal was not lost on O'Connell. In his heart he loved Father
Cahill for the Christ-like life of self-denial he had passed in this little
place. But in his brain O'Connell pitied the old man for his wasted
years in the darkness of ignorance in which so many of the villages of
Ireland seemed to be buried.
O'Connell belonged to the "Young Ireland" movement. They wanted to
bring the searchlight of knowledge into the abodes of darkness in
which the poor of Ireland were submerged. To the younger men it
seemed the priests were keeping the people from enlightenment. And

until the fierce blaze of criticism could be turned on to the government
of cruelty and oppression there was small hope of freeing the people
who had suffered so long in silence. O'Connell was in the front band of
men striving to arouse the sleeping nation to a sense of its own power.
And nothing was going to stop the onward movement. It pained him to
differ from Father Cahill--the one friend of his youth. If only he could
alter the good priest's outlook--win him over to the great procession
that was marching surely and firmly to self-government, freedom of
speech and of action, and to the ultimate making of men of force out of
the crushed and the hopeless. He would try.
"Father Cahill," he began softly, as though the good priest might be
wooed by sweet reason when the declamaory force of the orator failed,
"don't ye think it would be wiser to attend a little more to the people's
BODIES than to their SOULS? to their BRAINS rather than to their
HEARTS? Don't ye?"
"No, I do NOT," hotly answered the priest.
"Well, if ye DID," said the agitator,