POEMS AND Miscellaneous PapeRS-continued. PAGE St. Sechnall's Hymn to St. Patrick The Passing of Summer. By R. M. Sillard By the Sea. By Alice Furlong Young Jesuit Silence. By R. M. G. To My Soul's Friend. By M. E. L'Estrange The Happy Hour. By Nora Tynan O'Mahony Spring. By Rev. Frank C. Devas, s.j. May in the Morning. By R. M. G. On Killenarden Hill. By Nora Tynan O'Mahony To My Imp. By J. W. A. My Pain. By R. M. G. A Suburban Garden. By Emily Hickey The Modern Baby. By Nora Tynan. O'Mahony To the Lovely Memory of Sister Mary Stanislaus MacCarthy, O.S.D. . The Dawn. By R. M. G. Our Will. By R. M. G. To a Dominican Tertiary on her Thirty-fifth Birthday. Hickey May-Time Meadows. By Nora Tynan O'Mahony' Cor ad Cor A Fragrant Prayer. By Alice Furlong Mother Borgia's Golden Jubilee. By J. M'Auliffe A Child's Birthday. By Denis Florence MacCarthy S. J. Mute. By Rosa Mulholland Gilbert Meeting of Our Lady and St. Elizabeth. By M. M. M. Bilingual Rhymes. By M. R. In September Sunset. By Susan O'Reilly By Alice Furlong POEMS AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS-continued. The Man of the House. By Katharine Tynan 18, 177, 296, 357, 470, 536, 592 By the REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S.J 1. LIFE OF MOTHER MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL. Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy in California. 3/[Out of print for the present, 2. ST. JOSEPH'S ANTHOLOGY. Praise. 2/6 Poems in his 3. ST. JOSEPH OF JESUS AND MARY. Priedieu Papers in his Praise. 2/6 4. IDYLS OF KILLOWEN: A Soggarth's Secular Verses. 2/- net. 5. VESPERS AND COMPLINE: A Soggarth's Sacred Verses. 2/- net. 6. SONNETS ON THE SONNET. An Anthology. 2/- net. 7. COMMUNION DAY: Fervorinos Before and After. 2/ 8. MOMENTS BEFORE THE TABERNACLE. 1/ 9. AT HOME NEAR THE ALTAR. 1/ 10. CLOSE TO THE ALTAR RAILS. 1/ 11. ALTAR FLOWERS: A Book of Prayers in Verse. 1/ 12. LYRA CORDIS: Hymns to the Sacred Heart, &c. With Music. 3d. 13. ALL DAY LONG: Ejaculations in Rhyme. id. DUBLIN: M. H. GILL & SON, 50, Upper O'Connell-street. THE IRISH MONTHLY JANUARY, 1908 L THE WHISPERER ORD CASHEL and Miles Keon, the Whisperer, were fosterbrothers. They had drawn the milk from the same bounteous peasant breast, and there was a brotherly feeling between them for all that my Lord was Earl of Cashel, and Miles Keon a peasant by birth, and a Whisperer, that is to say, a horse tamer by profession. Miles was a little fellow, lean and agile, and as brown as a nut. My Lord was a big, fair, kindly young man, one that the ladies found it as hard to resist as the horses did the Whisperer. It was said that Mary Keon loved the fair child she had suckled at least as well as she did her flesh and blood. Be that as it may, there was no jealousy in Miles Keon's heart, child or man, towards the foster-brother who had left him hungry in babyhood. Always Miles was at his Lordship's heels, from childhood, through boyhood; and in manhood, if they were sometimes separated in the body, they were not in heart. They had had a happy boyhood together. My Lord was an orphan, and his guardian lived in London, and was well content to shuffle off the personal care of his ward on to Mr. Spence, the rector who taught him Latin and Greek, and saw that he did not lack training in the manly arts. Perhaps, after all, the most important part of Lord Cashel's education was learnt in the woods, in the company of Miles Keon, and on the mountains and the waters. Miles had a wonderful way with the wild creatures. The same gift that made him a Whisperer brought the birds to feed from his hand and the hares creeping about his feet. The red deer would stand for him to stroke their coats, and the eagle that builds on Carrigdhu had seen him approach the nest that was like a charnel house with the VOL XXXVI.-No. 415. I bones of lambs and such innocent creatures and had spared to strike him dead. They said the fishes would come to the top of the water when he played upon his flute. There was somethingMr. Spence said it was a gift of great love-that struck down between him and the animals the barrier of fear and enmity that has stood since the fall of man. Where Miles could go, my Lord could not follow; but he learnt secrets in the woods that he would never have known in any companionship but that of Miles Keon. Miles was a man before it was found he had the power of the Whisperer. He was employed at that time about Lord Cashel's stables at Ballaghadamore. He always went riding with my Lord, and had a general power of supervision over the stables and the kennels, for my Lord Cashel hunted the Muskerry country. Once it was found that he had the gift, he was in great request in three counties, and my Lord put no barrier in the way of his exercising his power with the horses. Usually to tame young, unbroken colts was his business, and it was remarkable that he never used the whip on them; but sometimes he was sent for to tame an incurably vicious horse, and it was then his real gift came out. He would enter a stable where a kicking, roaring devil was playing havoc with all around him. At the first low caressing note of his voice there would be quiet, and a few minutes later he would come out, leading a horse in his right mind. Was it the whisper in the horse's ear that wrought the marvel? The Whisperer kept his secret. But he would often say to those he heard talking of the wickedness of a horse that it was the wickedness of a man was to blame somewhere; "for it stands to reason," the Whisperer would say, "that the animal was created without sin, and it was only with man that sin entered the world." He was a bit of a theologian, and a pious boy in his way. Lord Cashel had been away visiting somewhere in the Bog of Allen, and the day he returned he came with a cloud of care on his brow. No sooner had he eaten and drunk than he sent for Miles to the stables. Fortunately no call had come for the Whisperer for a couple of days back. His Lordship sat in his private room waiting for him. The carpet was threadbare, and the moths had eaten the old curtains, but the driftwood fire burnt so cheerfully that one forgot the shabbiness of the furniture. When Miles came in, his Lordship was looking moodily at the toes of his boots, and at the sight the Whisperer's heart sank. Mary Keon's heart for her foster |
