At this crisis he was certainly an object of pity; his clothes, which, for some time before had been reduced to tatters, he had replaced by a cast-off coat and small-clothes, a present from his friend the Curate, who never abandoned him. This worthy young man could not afford him money, for as he had but fifty pounds a year, with which to clothe, subsist himself, keep a horse, and pay rent, it was hardly to be expected that his benevolence could be extensive. In addition to this, famine and contagious disease raged with formidable violence in the parish; so that the claims upon his bounty of hundreds who lay huddled together in cold cabins, in out-houses, and even behind ditches, were incessant as well, as heart-rending. The number of interments that took place daily in the parish was awful; nothing could be seen but funerals attended by groups of ragged and emaciated creatures from whose hollow eyes gleamed forth the wolfish fire of famine. The wretched mendicants were countless, and the number of coffins that lay on the public roads--where, attended by the nearest relatives of the deceased, they had been placed for the purpose of procuring charity--were greater than ever had been remembered by the oldest inhabitant. Such was the state of the parish when our poor scholar complained one day in school of severe illness. The early symptoms of the prevailing epidemic were well known; and, on examining more closely into his situation, it was clear that, according to the phraseology of the people, he had “got the faver on his back”--had caught “a heavy load of the faver.” The Irish are particularly apprehensive of contagious maladies. The moment it had been discovered that Jemmy was infected, his schoolfellows avoided him with a feeling of terror scarcely credible, and the inhuman master was delighted at any circumstance, however calamitous, that might afford him a pretext for driving the friendless youth out of the school. “Take,” said he, “every thing belongin' to you out of my establishment: you were always a plague to me, but now more so than ever. Be quick, sirra, and nidificate for yourself somewhere else. Do you want to thranslate my siminary into an hospital, and myself into Lazarus, as president? Go off, you wild goose! and conjugate _aegroto_ wherever you find a convenient spot to do it in.” The poor boy silently and with difficulty arose, collected his books, and, slinging on his satchel, looked to his schoolfellows, as if he had said, “Which of you will afford me a place where to lay my aching head?” All, however, kept aloof from him; he had caught the contagion, and the contagion, they knew, had swept the people away in vast numbers. At length he spoke. “Is there any boy among you,” he inquired, “who will bring me home? You know I am a stranger, an' far from my own, God help me!”