but his supreme hour was this mid-day class. After the first telling of the story, it was repeated in fragments, and written on the black-board by the head master; often would Micky interpose if he thought his own phrases did not need the grammatical disquisitions in which the teacher indulged.

The other favourite lesson was the singing. It was to teach the Irish "traditional" music. A young fellow with a good tenor voice sang the song first, and the class repeated under the baton of the head master. There was one song that was worth days of endeavour. It was the first taught, and it would convert any opponent of the traditional style. A Spailpin a

ruin, was instinctive with the intimate loveliness of Irish music; it was a possession for all time to have learned that song. Such a music lesson was an inoculation against anglicisation.

The day was rounded off with singing, dancing and music, in the Old College. A building that had once served as the Summer College saw every evening a gathering of the people of the parish and the students. There none but the real Irish singer or speaker might sing or recite; however, anyone skilled in reels or jigs or hornpipes might take the floor. The oil lamp showed many strange contrasts. There were the weather-beaten fishermen standing beside the scholar from the city; the field labourer sat with the school-teacher; in one corner were gathered the noisy brats and their shy sisters, and in another a group of young students. But at one side of the cleared space was the presiding spirit-sometimes with the bag-pipes, oftener with the fiddle-a professor of no small standing and ability. He was the constant part of the orchestra, the other part would be the fiddle or bag-pipes to keep him company. Nothing but old airs, old dances, old songs, would be admitted here. Any language but Irish was unpardonable, and any unhappy urchin who was heard to speak the Beurla was at once expelled. Those were merry evenings; how the audience enjoyed "Micky," and admired the graceful steps of a young nun-like girl pupil who dressed in black; what hearty humour greeted the brave lady-pupil of some fifteen stone, who took the floor with the best of them. Thus the evening brought a recreation, and yet continued the work of the day; here the beginners could test their knowledge of Irish practically; here the anglicised came to honour and long for the Irish dance and the Irish song. That presiding spirit (he taught the more recondite branches of Irish in the College) would tolerate there no new-fangled dances. The "Walls of Limerick and the "Waves of Tory," were kept

VOL. XLII.-No. 494

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for the largest class-room in the new College when the official entertainment was over.

To the fact that the College was residential must be attributed no small part of its efficiency; a gentle pressure was exerted to prevent the use of a single English word from rising till bed-time. Human weakness did not respond unfailingly, but those who observed the rules profited surprisingly. In the surrounding houses where many boarded out the same rule was observed as an essential part of the course. That rule was the real pinch of the sacrifice. Anyone who has ever been bound to speak an unfamiliar tongue, knows what pain perseverance means. And there the best patriot was proved. Otherwise a month at an Irish College might be a cheap holiday in the country or by the sea. The cost of living was rated at about fifteen shillings a week, and the teaching cost a guinea for the month. For that expense and a little mortification of the tongue one could become at last a real Irishman. Was it too dear?

There are some fourteen of these colleges in different parts of Ireland. The pupils of each praise their own college above all others. But one and all the colleges deserve praise and help from every Irishman. For, in the first place, they are helping to make Irish speakers of the National School teachers, who have the fate of Irish in their hands; and, secondly, these colleges are powerful agents in preserving the native Irish in the surrounding districts. The Irish who still have the chance of speaking Irish at their hearths, are taught by hard facts that it is a possession worth having; they see the townsfolk coming to their doors to learn something of all they have. Ireland is entering on a new life, but if she lives that life without her own language, to what will she come? Anglicisation as tinged with Protestantism: the antidote is the teanga na nGaedhal. God bless the Irish Colleges for the good tidings they spread among the Gael at home, be they anglicised or pure. The pure are kept pure, the anglicised are turned from their evil ways to a life among the Gaels.

Domnall Duð.

THE BROOCH OF LINDISFARNE

By JESSIE A. GAUGHAN

Author of "The Plucking of the Lily."

CHAPTER XVI

THE SOOTHSAYER

IN Mull, Coll MacDonald was fighting a lone battle against his love, with a mighty heart-hunger gnawing him all the while, a desire for but the sight of his beloved. A thousand times he wished he had not spoken to her, seeing too late that she had given him not the slightest ground for thinking that she loved him more than any cousin might. Ah, how easy it is to be wise -afterwards.

Grace was the one woman of his life; and now that the treasure of her love was not to be his, he willed to live his life alone. Still, whether he wandered by the sea-shore or roamed the hills he could not forget the hopes that once had animated him. Every wavelet babbled to him of his Irish cousin, spoke to him of happy days by other shores, and every wandering breeze upon the mountains seemed to breathe her name.

Too late he regretted his hasty coming to Mull, where, as a hostage, he led an idle life with all day long to think. Why, he asked himself, had he not carried his sword to France or Spain, where valour was always welcome, and sought forgetfulness in the stir of camps, or found it, perhaps, in a soldier's death? But he was proud, and concealed his trouble even from his fellow-hostage and nephew, James MacDonald.

June slipped away, and hot July came to redden the heather bells and ripen the corn. But more than corn was ripening in Islay, and the time was at hand for Sir Lauchlan MacLean to go to claim the Rhinns.

Sir Lauchlan MacLean had been a week or more in Islay, living in a partly ruined castle built upon an island in Loch Gorm in the Rhinns, when there came a night of storm on which the wind howled with momentarily increasing force across Loch Indaal, the loch that all but divides the Rhinns from the rest of Islay, and sighed weirdly through the Wood of Lagbuie

that stretched around the loch's head. It was a night when not even a dog should be abroad, a night when the Cave of the Winds was emptied of all its furies, when the Rain God let loose his wrath on earth and ocean. It was fast approaching midnight and every clachan was sunk in well-earned sleep.

But there was one watcher by a peat fire glowing warm in a hut so small as to offer no mark for the force of the storm which, scorning such humble opposition, passed above it, leaving it comparatively sheltered, save when some envious whirlwind curled around it, shaking it in violence as if desirous of uprooting the tiny dwelling. But the storm that brings the proud head of the forest oak to earth, knows not how to harm the lowly shrub, and the hut stood firm where a castle might have trembled. The darkness that encompassed it was so deep and black, that a stranger in search of shelter would have passed blindly by, unless a faint light issuing from some chink had warned him of a habitation; and, without such guiding ray, it would have been hard for even a native not to have brushed past its walls unknowing.

The thatched roof of grass and heather was unable to withstand the attacks of the heavy rain that fell in sheets persistently upon it, but here and there allowed a constant drop to find its way into the warm interior. Within, the atmosphere was thick with smoke, and warm, though the wind came in through cracks and the rain formed pools upon the earthen floor. In the middle of the floor, upon a circle of stones, was built a fire of peat, above which, upon a griddle that hung suspended by a chain, were cooking bannocks of oatmeal.

It was a strange time for bannock-baking, but no time is late or strange for a woman who waits for an absent one. The only human occupant of the hut watched the cakes and turned them carefully.

"

"

'Will that wild laddie never come, Tibbie ? said she, addressing herself to a beautiful Highland hunting dog that lay, head on paws, in the hot glow of the fire.

Tibbie, with a low whine of pleasure, turned her large brown eyes upon the woman, then closed them again with a little sigh. This, with a slight wag of her tail, was the sleepy animal's most eloquent answer. Beside her, two well-grown pups lay sleeping, weary with their day of romping, and probably carrying their play into their dreams, for now and then their little limbs twitched and they bared their teeth as if in challenge, emitting whispered half-growls.

The woman removed the griddle, and placing the bannocks edgeways to the fire, sat down upon a low stool and fixed her gaze upon the glowing peat as if to seek therein for information. "Where can the daft laddie be this wild, wild night?" she mused.

An out-of-door life in islands, where the very wind carries health, had preserved to her an appearance of comparative youth and a corresponding activity. Though she must have been past sixty, not a streak of grey was in her hair, black as the raven's wing; and in the light of the dancing flames her eyes, black also, sparkled with the fires of youth-with an unearthly glitter the Islesmen would have said. The fire burned brightly; fantastic shadows played upon the floor and walls. There was no other light.

Suddenly Tibbie's ears went up and she gave a low warning growl that made her pups start in sleepy wonderment. The woman strained her ears, but what was easily perceptible to the dog's sharper sense was inaudible to her, though her hearing was keen. She was unable to single out any distinctive sound from the weird symphony of wind-tossed trees that rose and fell rhythmically about her dwelling, but she knew it did not mean the return of the absent boy. Tibbie never growled at the approach of her well-loved playfellow. There was a sharp sound as of a dry branch cracking underfoot close outside the door, and then a knock, short and authoritative. The woman rose and, withdrawing the fastenings of the door, threw it wide.

With a brief greeting, a man entered, and she secured the door hastily behind him to shut out the storm, but not before a blast had swirled into the hut carrying with it sand and leaves to strew the floor, drawing from the hearth a thick cloud of peat dust to settle white on all within, and disturbing the slumbers of sundry feathered inmates that found the smoke-grimed rafters a snug roosting-place. Tibbie's interest in the visitor ceased at sight, and the fowl, with much clucking remonstrance and striving for better places, settled to sleep once more.

The newcomer was tall and strongly built. The large plaid wrapped close about him for protection was rain-soaked, and his cap sent the rain drops flying as he removed it.

"A welcome shelter on an eerie night, Janet!" said he, approaching the fire.

"And welcome storm that brings me such a visitor," said the woman, bringing forward another stool and setting it in the warmest place, disturbing for the purpose her animal friends.