“But considher,” said another, edging off from Jemmy, however, “that he’s a poor scholar, an’ that there’s a great blessin’ to thim that assists the likes of him.”

“Ay, is there that, sure enough, Dan; but you see—­blur-an-age, what’s to be done?  He can’t die this way, wid nobody wid him but himself.”

“Let us help him!” exclaimed another, “for God’s sake, an’ we won’t be apt to take it thin.”

“Ay, but how can we help him, Frank?  Oh, bedad, it ‘ud be a murdherin’ shame, all out, to let the crathur die by himself, widout company, so it would.”

“No one wul take him in, for fraid o’ the sickness.  Why, I’ll tell you what we’ll do:—­Let us shkame the remainder o’ this day off o’ the Major, an’ build a shed for him on the road-side here, jist against the ditch.  It’s as dhry as powdher.  Thin we can go through the neighbors, an’ git thim to sit near him time about, an’ to bring him little dhreeniens o’ nourishment.”

“Divil a purtier!  Come thin, let us get a lot o’ the neighbors, an’ set about it, poor bouchal.  Who knows but it may bring down a blessin’ upon us aither in this world or the next.”

“Amin!  I pray Gorra! an’ so it will sure I doesn’t the Catechiz say it?  ‘There is but one Church,’ says the Catechiz, ‘one Faith, an’ one Baptism.’  Bedad, there’s a power o’ fine larnin’ in the same Catechiz, so there is, an’ mighty improvin’.”

An Irishman never works for wages with half the zeal which he displays when working for love.  Ere many hours passed, a number of the neighbors had assembled, and Jemmy found himself on a bunch of clean straw, in a little shed erected for him at the edge of the road.

Perhaps it would be impossible to conceive a more gloomy state of misery than that in which young M’Evoy found himself.  Stretched on the side of the public road, in a shed formed of a few loose sticks covered over with “scraws,” that is, the sward of the earth pared into thin stripes—­removed above fifty perches from any human habitation—­his body racked with a furious and oppressive fever—­his mind conscious of all the horrors by which he was surrounded—­without the comforts even of a bed or bedclothes—­and, what was worst of all, those from whom he might expect kindness, afraid; to approach him!  Lying helpless, under these circumstances, it ought not to be wondered at, if he wished that death might at once close his extraordinary sufferings, and terminate those straggles which filial piety had prompted him to encounter.

This certainly is a dark picture, but our humble hero knew that even there the power and goodness of God could support him.  The boy trusted in God; and when removed into his little shed, and stretched upon his clean straw, he felt that his situation was, in good sooth, comfortable when contrasted with what it might have been, if left to perish behind a ditch, exposed to the scorching-heat of the sun by day, and the dews of heaven by night.  He felt the hand of God even in this, and placed himself, with a short but fervent prayer, under his fatherly protection.