“Ten years,” said Katty.  “Oh! it’s more, I’m thinkin’; it’s ten years since poor Dick, God rest his sowl, died, and this was full two years afore that:  but no matther, agra, I’ll let your Reverence hear the prayer, at any rate.”  She here repeated a beautiful Irish prayer to the Blessed Virgin, of which that beginning with “Hail, holy Queen!” in the Roman Catholic prayer-books is a translation, or perhaps the original.  While she was repeating the prayer, I observed her hand in her bosom, apparently extricating something, which, on being brought out, proved to be a scapular; she held it up, that I might see it:  “Your Reverence,” said she, “this is the ninth journey of the kind I made:  but you don’t wonder now, I bleeve, how stoutly I’m able to stump it.”

“You really do stump it stoutly, as you’ say,” I replied.

“Ay,” said she, “an’ not a wan’ o’ me but’s as weak as a cat, at home scarce can put a hand to any thing; but then, your Reverence, my eldest daughter, Ellish, jist minds the house, an’ lots the ould mother mind the prayers, as I’m not able to do a hand’s turn, worth namin’.”

“But you appear to be stout and healthy,” I observed, “if a person may judge by your looks.”

“Glory be to them that giv it to me then! that I am at the present time, padre dheelish.  But don’t you know I’m always so durin’ this journey; I’ve a wicket heart-burn that torments the very life out o’ me, all the year round till this; and what ’ud your Reverence think, but it’s sure to lave me, clear and clane, and a fortnight or so afore I come here; I never wanst feels a bit iv it, while I rouse and prepare myself for the Island, nor for a month after I come here agen, Glory be to God.”  She then turned to her companion, and commenced, in a voice half audible—­“Musha!  Katty a-haygur, did ye iver lay your two livin’ eyes on so young a priest? a sweet and holy crathur he is, no doubt, and has goodness in his face, may the Lord bless him!”

“Musha!” said she, “surely your Reverence can’t be long afther bein’ ordained, I’m thinkin’?”

“Well, that’s very strange,” said I, evading her, “so you tell me your heartburn leaves you, and that you get stout every year about the time of your pilgrimage?”

“An’ troth an’ I do!—­hut! what am I sayin’?  Indeed, sir, may be that’s more than I can say, either, your Reverence:  but for sartin’it is”—­

“Do you mean that you do, or that you do not?” I inquired.

“Indeed, your Reverence, you jist hot it—­the Lord bless you, and spare you to the parents that reared ye; an’ proud people may they be at having the likes of ’im, Katty avourneen”—­turning abruptly to Katty, that she might disarm my interogatories on this tender subject with a better grace—­“proud people, as I said afore, the Lord may spare him to them!”

We here topped a little hill, and saw the spire of a steeple, and the skirts of a country town, which a passenger told us was about three miles distant.