they that love the larning desarve to be encouraged!  Well, behold you, says one of them, ’will you remember the poor scholar,’ says he, ‘and put something in the hat?  You don’t know,’ says he, ‘but his prayers will be before you.’ (* In the other world.) ‘True enough, maybe,’ says the man, ’and there’s a crown to him, for God’s sake.’  Well and good; the man died, and so did the wife; but the very day before her departure, she got a scapular, and died in it.  She had one sister, however, a good crature, that did nothing but fast and pray, and make her sowl.  This woman had strong doubts upon her mind, and was very much troubled as to whether or not her sister went to heaven; and she begged it as a favor from the blessed Virgin, that the state of her sister’s sowl might be revaled to her.  Her prayer was granted.  One night, about a week after her death, her sister came back to her, dressed, all in white, and circled round by a veil of glory.

“‘Is that Mary?’ said the living sister.

“‘It is,’ said the other; ‘I have got liberty to appear to you,’ says she, ‘and to tell you that I’m happy.’

“‘May the holy Virgin be praised!’ said the other.  ’Mary, dear, you have taken a great weight off of me,’ says she:  ’I thought you’d have a bad chance, in regard of the life you led.’

“‘When I died,’ said the spirit, ’and was on my way to the other world, I came to a place where the road divided itself into three parts;—­one to heaven, another to hell, and a third to purgatory.  There was a dark gulf between me and heaven, and a breach between me and purgatory that I couldn’t step across, and if I had missed my foot there, I would have dropped into hell.  So I would, too, only that the blessed Virgin put my own scapular over the breach, and it became firm, and I stepped on it, and got over.  The Virgin then desired me to look into hell, and the first person I saw was my own husband, standing with a green sod under his feet!  ‘He got that favor,’ said the blessed Virgin, ’in consequence of the prayers of a holy priest, that had once been a poor scholar, that he gave assistance to, at a collection made for him in such a chapel,’ says she, ‘Then,’ continued the sowl, ‘Mary,’ says she, ’but there’s some great change in the world since I died, or why would the people live so long?  It can’t be less than six thousand years since I departed, and yet I find every one of my friends just as I left them.’

“‘Why,’ replied the living sister, ‘you’re only six days dead.’

“‘Ah, avourneen!’ said the other, ’it can’t be—­it can’t be! for I have been thousands on thousands of years in pain!’—­and as she spoke this she disappeared.

“Now there’s a proof of the pains of purgatory, where one day seems as long as a thousand years; and you know we oughtn’t to grudge a thrifle to a fellow-crature, that we may avoid it.  So you see, my friends, there’s nothing like good works.  You know not when or where this lad’s prayers may benefit you.  If he gets ordained, the first mass he says will be for his benefactors; and in every one he celebrates after that, they must also be remembered:  the words are pro omnibus benefactoribus meis, per omnia secula secularum!