Their ancient church was assigned to the Benedictines. Wishing to get back to the spot so hallowed by association with many of their saints, the Dominicans made proposals to the Benedictines and offered to indemnify the latter for any expenses incurred during their occupancy. Not having been fortunate in obtaining their desire they had recourse to the minister Landucci, who, however, was not able to arrange the transfer. Then it was that the General of the Dominicans, Father Jandel, endeavoured to induce the people of Fonte-Branda to surrender possession of the Oratory, or at least to allow it to be served by the Frati; offering at the same time to substantially benefit the contrada by providing dowries for the young maidens of the quarter, taking charge of the sick, and keeping the roadway in repair. To this the Fontebrandini replied in terms which mean, in plain English, that their daughters got settled whether they had fortunes or no; that they could take care of their own sick; and that the road would do well enough as it was! Anyhow they would not give up the Oratory.

While wandering about here, I cannot help thinking that there is a good deal of exaggeration in the way people talk of S. Catherine being the daughter of a dyer; the allusions made to the poor shop of a dyer, and so on. Benincasa's business was dying wool: an important branch of the manufacture then so flourishing in Siena; and in his factory many apprentices and workmen were employed. He belonged to the most powerful class, politically, in the city. Whether he himself ever sat in the Camera de' Signori Nove I cannot say; but it is on record that his son Bartolo, and at least one relative of the family, did reside as governors in the Palazzo Publico, and helped to rule the turbulent republic.

Other things strike me, too, as I linger on the high open places within the walls to enjoy the view of the city, with its towers and its gates. For instance, it occurs to me that unless one has seen Siena, or at any rate, got of it a good picture in the brain and learned something of its history, one must inevitably miss much of the force of S. Catherine's writings, and fail to note the singular appositeness of her words. When she speaks of the duty men are bound to of guarding well their own city-the noble city of the soul; and says to her disciples that her desire is to see them true signori, full of virile strength and not timorous rulers of their own city; and calls the faculties of the human mind the gates of the citadel; and talks of descending into the battle-field, following the standard (gonfalone) of the holy cross: the words have a more direct bearing than a mere figure of speech could have. The warlike images so constantly used by one of whom suavity was a remarkable characteristic; the frequent exhortations to manliness and courage, even when women are addressed; the glorification of free-will, that invulnerable defence with which God has armed the soul, are all traits of peculiar significance when we remember the conditions of public and of individual life in which the saint

grew up. The martial ring of the sweet saint's words, and the republican tone of her essentially obedient spirit, are no mystery with the story of Siena in one's hand and the battlemented city before one's eyes.

I only wish I could stay for a season on the hill-top here, study the Sienese school of art, learn the language in its native purity, and read in its own well-preserved annals the history of a city which had its bad and wicked days like the rest of the world, but withal gave birth to so many saints and servants of God that it was called the "ante-chamber of paradise."

S. A.

A RUSTIC SKETCH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "NANCY HUTCH."

N the banks of a small stream that passed through the village of Ballyaer, a tucking-mill was, thirty years ago, kept constantly at work upon the friezes and other fabrics manufactured by the people of the surrounding district.

The mill was built beneath the gray gable-end of a ruined castle; out of sight, though scarcely out of call of the village, from which, however, it was completely isolated by an elevation in the ground, and a turn in the road lying between. It was a lonely, pleasant little place. Not even the ghosts of its ancient owners, if they haunted it then, could take umbrage at the modest movements of the mill-wheel, as, in partnership with the flowing waters of the Aer, it pursued its cleanest, quietest, most musical of trades: like some thriving but humble-minded servant, that chose traffic in its least offensive form to ply at the portal of decayed gentility.

Ballyaer being many miles distant from a city, or even large town, its business was conducted precisely as it had been a hundred years before. The householder killed his own cattle, tanned his own leather, and made his own salt; the housewife sought wool and flax, took hold of the spindle, and, seated by her own fireside, provided for the wants of her dependents. Ballyaer was thus a thriving place for tuckers; and Peter McKeon, the owner of the mill, made the most of his advantages of site and circumstance.

Either as farmer or tucker-he was both-Peter was by no

means popular. He had made himself obnoxious to his many customers, especially the poorer sort, by a miserly mode of dealing. He tucked their friezes with conscientious care, but was entirely indifferent to the welfare of the wearers. Nay, it seemed as though he tucked his own nature with his neighbours' cloths; for, during the constant repetition of the same process, that became less and less pervious to tears or smiles-the rain and sunshine of the human world.

He was a stranger, too, a native of a distant county: a fact that exercises a peculiar influence on the estimate în which a man is held by an Irish rural population. If personally likable, it tells greatly in his favour. It appeals irresistibly on his behalf to that hospitality of feeling, by which a sensitive people are impelled to supply, so far as possible, the wants experienced "on the hearthstone of the heart," by one who is making a new home for himself. They are ready-too ready-to credit his assumptions; to take upon trust himself and what he offers-" cows from Connaught wear long horns." But when the incomer is unsocial in temper, or repulsive in manner, this particular operates with fully equal force in his disfavour. There are for such a one no recollections of an open-handed boyhood to claim indulgence for the nature hardened in a struggle with the world, and no inherited good-will to break the hard word against his father's son. The people, by an inappreciable process of reasoning, arrive at the conclusion that a stranger has no right to come amongst them resolved not to be of them; and also, perhaps, that if this stranger had been what he should be, he might have found the means to stay at home. The Tucker belonged to this latter species of exotic; one by no means easily acclimated. After having spent ten years in Ballyaer, he still was a stranger-everybody's tucker, nobody's neighbour. And, in consequence, a general though good-humoured grudge was in full force against him.

He was a shrewd, silent, "dhry little costheen iv a man," who kept a cautious and constant watch on all that he possessed his mill, his house, his fields, his pigs, and especially and above all his pony. This last was a stout brown cob that, on attaining a certain step on the ladder of fortune, he had permitted himself to purchase; and on it he rode to fair and market, bog and meeting, as occasion offered. It supplied his sole society and only recreation-so far as recreation was enjoyable by such a man. The good qualities of the animal were known but to its master-for he never lent it. His unvarying refusal to do so was one cause of the disesteem in which he and his pony decidedly were held. Perhaps it was fair, that, sharing, as he freely did, in his master's prosperity, the pony should take also a portion of the odium incurred in its attainment. It may then be supposed that any circumstance, likely to bring trouble upon Peter or his pony, would be likely to create satisfaction rather than sympathy at Ballyaer.

On one point, especially, the Tucker was assailable. He was absent and forgetful to a singular degree, and thus open to the practical jokes and play-boy conspiracies of his light-hearted and open-pocketed neighbours. His movable goods and chattels were often missing; and a search for them sometimes formed no small part of his hard day's work. If he forgot spade or shovel in the garden," it was sure to be put carefully out of the way. If he laid down his pipe for a moment, it was slipped into his pocket, to reappear through the hole it would burn out. And so on. Although quite conscious of his own failing, he could not, it would seem, overcome it. And as he rarely could bring home to the "villyans" any of the many annoyances inflicted on him, he resented them only by increasing general crustiness, which of course hardened the hearts of his enemies. However, one of those occasions, a fool's-day joke, in which the whole village population took part, brought about a crisis in his malady. It is a story remarkable to this day in Ballyaer.

It was a fine hoar-frosted morning-the eye could take its longest range when the Tucker was seen approaching the village, pausing at intervals, and gazing anxiously into the fields on either side of the way, as if in search of something. It was the general breakfast hour; and the people employed on the surrounding lands were seated, singly or in groups, some eating, some awaiting the bringing of their meal. None were too busy to look round occasionally; and the movements of the Tucker soon attracted the attention of several.

"Look at Peter the Miller," said one of a group seated on a heap of stones, which they had been breaking; "what is the ould thief afther this mornin' ?”

get."

"Somethin' that's losin', to be sure," said another.

"It's knowledge he's looking for," said a third; “that he'll

"Boys," said the Tucker, coming up, "did any o' ye see my pony to-day morning ?"

"Your pony, Mr. McKeown-which of 'em ?"

"I have but wan," said Peter, "if I could find him.”

"Is it missin' him you'd be ?" asked another of the men. "What else 'ud make me be looking for him ?" said the Tucker. "A good humour for jokin' your in, in this frosty morning, Mr. McKeown. Shasthone! you to miss your pony!"

""Tis a sayrious joke to me, if some o' ye didn't see him. Come now, boys-if ye know anything about him, tell me. I have something else to do besides galivanting over the country on a wild goose chase."

"And so have we, Mr. McKeown," said one of the stonebreakers, taking up his hammer in one hand as he lifted a potato to his mouth with the other, and resuming his work with the utmost seeming assiduity.

"Hallo, Ned!" cried another of the men, to a young labourer who had just stepped over a fence on the roadside.

"Hallo!" was the reply.

"Did you see the Miller's pony on the sthray this morning?" "Bad luck to the bit of anything belonging to him I ever see upon the sthray," returned the new comer.

"What time did ye miss him, Mr. McKeown ?" asked a black-eyed boy who had joined the group.

"What time !" exclaimed one of the stone-breakers; "'tis the lucky minit you'll be askin' after next, you young spalpeen, you. How did it happen to you, at all, Mr. McKeown ?"

"I was yonder there, west a piece, seeing after a handful o' turf, and when I come back, the door was open and the pony gone." "E'thin, Mr. McKeown, it was a dirty advantage to take of ye for once't in your life. 'Tis seldom with ye to be overseen about lavin' the door open."

"A miss is as good as a mile," said the Tucker. "An' I'm afraid I won't find the pony."

"That's out of all raison," said Ned. "How could any wan take him away at that hour o' the mornin', and nobody at all to see him ?"

It was undoubtedly very mysterious that a horse should be stolen at an hour when the whole population was stirring in the village or working in the fields. The Tucker stood still and silent in great perplexity; constrained to accept from those around him denials, which the accompanying winks and nods made extremely doubtful.

"Now, boys," he began, as he caught smiles exchanged between them.

"Now, thin, Mr. McKeown," interrupted one of the stonebreakers, "the dickins a bit o' your pony I see from the time you come home from the fair o' Thursday until you come lookin' for him now."

"Nor I," said a second.

"Nor I," added a third.

Hopeless of gaining information from this group, the Tucker moved on towards the village, followed by the man who was addressed as Ned, who was going that way.

"Good morrow, kindly, Mr. McKeown," said a stout, goodhumoured looking girl, who came up with a pail of milk upon her brown, curly head. This was as if in return for the "good-morrow" that, according to rustic etiquette, the Tucker should have been the first to render.

"Good-morrow, good-morrow," said the Tucker. "Are you out long, Jude ?"

"Wish, an' that I am: these three hours good."

"Would you see a pony in your way?" interrupted Ned, hastily coming up.