furnace tries the gold, so did the hour of trial draw near to Patrick
that he might the more provedly receive the crown of life. For when the
illustrious boy had perlustrated three lustres, already attaining his
sixteenth year, he was, with many of his-fellow-countrymen, seized by
the pirates who were ravaging the borders, and was made captive and
carried into Ireland, and was there sold as a slave to a certain pagan
prince named Milcho, who reigned in the Northern parts of the island,
even at the same age when Joseph is recorded to have been sold in
Egypt. . . ."

Chapter XVII.--"And St. Patrick, guided by his angelic guide, came to
the sea, and he there found a ship that was to carry him to Britain,
and a crew of heathens, who were in the ship, freely received him, and
hoisting their sails with a favourable wind, after three days they made
land. And, being come out of the ship, they found a region deserted and
inhabited by none, and they began to travel over the whole country for
the space of twenty-eight days; and for want of food in that fearful
and wild solitude were they perishing of hunger" (Jocelin's "Life of
St. Patrick," translated by E. L. Swift).

Jocelin's "Life of St. Patrick" deserves the harsh sentence pronounced
upon it by Canon O'Hanlon: "It is incomparably the worst" of all the
Latin "Lives" of the Saint. Jocelin represents Conchessa, St. Patrick's
saintly mother, as a niece of St. Martin of Tours, and, almost in the
same breath, suggests that either St. Martin's brother, or his brother-
in-law, sold Conchessa and her elder sister to Calphurnius, a Briton of
Clydesdale, as slaves. Although Conchessa was sold as a slave "at the
command of her father," she is said to have succeeded in captivating
and marrying her master Calphurnius.