You remember how the miners at Kingswood collected money and built a school for their children. Well, about ten years afterwards, another school was built at Kingswood for the children of the travelling preachers. These preachers had not much time to look after their families themselves, being so much away from home, and they wanted their boys and girls to be taught to read their Bibles and to learn to love Jesus. They had some dreadfully strict rules at this boarding school, which my readers would not have liked at all, and which I am afraid the children there did not like either, for I have heard that some of the boys ran away. They had to go to bed every night at eight o'clock, and what was worse, get up every morning at four. Then every little boy and girl, unless they were poorly, had to fast every Friday, that is, they were not allowed to have anything to eat all day until three o'clock. But I had better not tell you any more of these dreadful rules, only you may be very thankful that you are living in these days, when you have much better times than the boys and girls who lived 150 years ago. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXXII. A visit to Ireland.--The sack that did not contain potatoes.--The bogie man.--What the sack did contain.--The prayer-meeting in the barn.--Mr. Charles Wesley gets married.--And so does Mr. John.--Two niggers who became missionaries. IN 1749 Mr. Wesley paid a visit to Ireland, where already he had many followers. His brother Charles had visited there two years before, and was a great favourite, for the Irish people love music, and would always go to hear his hymns. In many places in Ireland the Methodists were treated quite as badly as they were in our own country; but the same angel of the Lord that protected them in England followed them across the Irish sea. There is a funny story told of how they were once saved from a band of rough men. The Roman Catholics persecuted them so much at Wexford that they were obliged to hold their meeting secretly in a barn. Once, one of their persecutors got to know the night they were having a meeting, and told his companions he would hide himself in the barn before the service began, and then when it commenced he would open the door to them. They thought this was a splendid idea. So the man went to the barn, and there found an old sack or bag, big enough for him to get into. Into this he crept, and by and by the people began to come, and the service commenced. First, they sang a hymn; and somehow the man in the bag enjoyed it so much, he quite forgot what he had come into the barn for.