There was
consequently no person of respectability in the neighborhood cognizant
of his situation. He was left to the humbler class of the peasantry, and
honorably did they, with all their errors and ignorance, discharge those
duties which greater wealth and greater knowledge would, probably, have
left unperformed.
On the morning of the last day he ever intended to spend in the shed,
at eleven o'clock he hoard the sounds of horses' feet passing along
the road, The circumstance was one quite familiar to him; but these
horsemen, whoever they might be, stopped, and immediately after, two
respectable looking men, dressed in black, approached him. His forlorn
state and frightfully wasted appearance startled them, and the younger
of the two asked, in a tone of voice which went directly to his heart,
how it was that they found him in a situation so desolate.
The kind interest implied by the words, and probably a sense of his
utterly destitute state, affected him strongly, and he burst into tears.
The strangers looked at each other, then at him; and if looks could
express sympathy, theirs expressed it.
"My good boy," said the first, "how is it that we find you in a
situation so deplorable and wretched as this? Who are you, or why is it
that you have not a friendly roof I to shelter you?"
"I'm a poor scholar," replied Jemmy, "the son of honest but reduced
parents: I came to this part of the country with the intention of
preparing myself for Maynooth and, if it might plase God, with the hope
of being able to raise them out of their distress.
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