While he ate the bitter bread of bondage in a foreign land, a profound spiritual change came over him. He had never given much thought to his religion, but now that he was a thrall amid strangers, “the Lord,” he says, “opened the sense of my unbelief.” The ardour of religious emotion, “the love and fear of God,” so fully consumed his soul that in a single day or night he would offer a hundred prayers; and he describes himself, in woodland or on mountain-side, rising from his bed before dawn and going forth to pray in hail, or rain, or snow. His contemplation was above the earth, And fixed on spiritual object. Thus the years of his bondage were also the years of his “conversion,” and he looked back upon this stage in his spiritual development as the most important and critical in his life. [Sidenote: THE ESCAPE] But he was homesick, and he was too young to abandon hope of deliverance and escape from the wild outland into which fate had cast him. He longed and hoped, and we may be sure that he prayed, to win his way back within the borders of the Roman Empire. His waking hopes came back to him at night as responsive voices in his dreams. He heard a voice that said to him in his sleep, “Thou doest well to fast; thou shalt soon return to thy native land.” And another night it said, “Behold, thy ship is ready.” Patrick took these dream-voices for divine intimations, and they heartened him to make an attempt to escape. Escape was not easy, and was beset with many perils. For the port where he might hope to find a foreign vessel was about a hundred and eighty miles from his master’s house. Patrick, in describing his escape, does not name the port, but we may conjecture that it was Inver-dea, at the mouth of the stream, which is now called the Vartry, and reaches the sea near the town of Wicklow. The resolution of attempting this long flight, with the danger of falling into the hands of some other master, if not of being overtaken by his own, is ascribed by Patrick to the promptings of a higher will than his. He escaped all dangers and reached the port, where he knew no man. But at all events he had chosen the season of his flight well. The ship of his dreams was there, and was soon to sail. It was a ship of traders; their cargo was aboard, and part of the cargo consisted of dogs, probably Irish wolf-hounds. Patrick spoke to some of the crew, and made a proposal of service. He was willing to work his passage to the port to which the vessel was bound. The proposal seems to have been at first entertained, but afterwards the shipmaster objected, and said sharply, “Nay, in no wise shalt thou come with us.” The disappointment, as safety seemed within grasp, must have been bitter, and Patrick turned away from the mariners to seek the lodging where he had found shelter. As he went he prayed, and before he finished his prayer he heard one of the crew shouting behind him, “Come quickly, for they are calling you.” The