Now I have to turn my attention to the Curé, who is also an invalid. He is living here in this big, bleak stone house, with an old housekeeper who is deaf, and the biggest, ugliest looking brute of a dog I have ever seen. He is run down and dispirited. We Americans don’t like that atmosphere so I started in to chirk him up. First I called in Dr. Lyttle, who pronounced the verdict that there was no reason why with rest and change and a new outlook on life he could not last for ten years. Today is Sunday and I told the lads in church that I wanted a collection to give a poor old priest a holiday; and they responded nobly. For a second Mass I went down to McKenna’s town and found a new device, a green shamrock on a white background, over the door of his battalion headquarters. His is to be known as the Shamrock battalion of the regiment. After Mass and another collection I took breakfast with him. I had brought with me some money that Captain Mangan owed him. While I was at breakfast Mangan came in himself, and in his presence I handed the money over to McKenna. “If I didn’t have you around, Father, to threaten Mangan with hell-fire, I’d never get a cent of it.” “If you weren’t such a piker you wouldn’t keep a cent of it, now you’ve got it. You’d give it to Father Duffy for his poor old Curé.” “All right, I’ll give it, and double it if you cover it.” That meant forty dollars apiece for my nice old gentlemen. But McKenna was not satisfied. “Come on, Cassidy, come across,” and the Lieutenant with a smile on his handsome face came across with more than any Lieutenant can afford. McKenna shouted to the others, “Come all the rest of you heretics; you haven’t given a cent to a church since you left home,” and with a whole lot of fun about it, everybody gave generously. I could not help thinking what a lesson in American broadmindedness the whole scene presented. But the immediate point was that I was able to do handsomely for my old Curé. I went back to him, and from the different collections I poured into his hat in copper pennies, bits of silver, dirty little shin-plasters and ten franc notes, the sum of two thousand francs. He was speechless. The old housekeeper wept; even the dog barked its loudest.