I was put sitting up on the counter one day to read a lesson for her, and after I had finished reading, I heard her say to my mother, “Nellie, a laodh! coimead o scoil tamal e; eireog a leighean ’n a cheann”--“Nellie, dear! keep him from school a while; the learning will rise in his head.” Oh, yes; I was a prodigy of learning that time. My learning ran far and away ahead of my understanding. I was in my class one day, reading from the little book of “Scripture lessons,” and I read aloud that the mother of Jacob and Esau “bore twines”--“What’s that? What’s that?” said the master, smiling, and I again read that that lady of the olden time “bore twines.” I did not know enough to pronounce the word “twins,” and probably did not know at the time what “twins” meant. If the schoolmaster was teaching me my natural language--the Irish, and if I had read from the book--“do bidh cooplee aici,” I would readily understand that she had a couple of children together at the one lying-in. My master often slapped me on the hand with his wooden slapper, but he never flogged me; though I must have suffered all the pains and penalties of flogging from him one time, for, before he struck me at all, I screeched as if he had me half-killed. I was put into the vestry-room one evening, with five or six other boys, to be flogged, after the rest of the scholars had left school. The master came in and locked the door, and gave the orders to strip. I unbuttoned my trousers from my jacket, and let them fall down. I commenced screeching, and I’d emphasize with a louder screech every lash of the cat-o’-nine tails that every little boy would get. I was left for the last. He caught me by the shoulder. “Now,” said he, “will you be late from school any more?” “Oh, sir, oh, sir, I’ll never be late any more.” “You’ll keep your promise--sure?” “Oh, yes, yes, sir; I’ll never be late anymore.” Then, with cat-o’-nine tails lifted in his hand, he let me go without striking me. This school I was at was called the Old-Chapel school. It was built on the top of the hill field, and on the top of the Rock. Very likely it was built in the days of the persecution of the church, when it was a crime for the priest to say mass, and a crime for the people to attend mass. From the location of it, any one coming toward it from the north, east, south or west, could be seen. The watchman in the belfry house on the tiptop of the rock could see all around him. “The Rock” is a seashore hamlet, inhabited chiefly by fishermen. The hill field was one of my father’s fields, and often I went over the wall on a Sunday morning to look at Corly Keohane ringing the bell for mass. I had to be up early those mornings to keep the Rock hens out of the cornfield; often and often the bedclothes were pulled off me at daybreak. CHAPTER IV. IRISH FIRESIDE STORY AND HISTORY.