So they
went off and stirred up the people: and the end was that one sunshiny
morning a dirty rabble marched up to the mill and laid hands on the
saint. On what charge, do you think? Why, for _Being without Visible
Means of Support!_
"There's me pethrifyin' spicimins!" cried the saint: and he tugged at
one of the ropes that stretched down into the Lough.
"Indade!" answered one of the ten kings: "Bad luck to your spicimins!"
says he.
"Fwhat's that ye're tuggin.' at?" asks a bystander.
"Now the Holy Mother presarve your eyesight, Tim Coolin," answers St.
Piran, pulling it in, "if ye can't tell a plain millstone at foive
paces! I never asked ye to see _through_ ut," he added, with a
twinkle, for Tim had a plentiful lack of brains, and that the company
knew.
Sure enough it was a millstone, and a very neat one; and the saint,
having raised a bit of a laugh, went on like a cheap-jack:
"Av there's any gintleman prisunt wid an eye for millstones, I'll
throuble him to turn ut here. Me own make," says he, "jooled in wan
hole, an' dog-chape at fifteen shillin'--"
He was rattling away in this style when somebody called out, "To think
av a millstone bein' a visible means av support!" And this time the
laugh turned against the saint.
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