"A child's hand shall guide," said the priest. Then he added:

"It has guided him. Whenever ye get them wicked thoughts about
shouldherin' a gun and flashin' a pike, come round to confession,
Flaherty, and it's the good penance I'll give ye to dhrive the
devil's temptation away from ye."

"I will that, Father Cahill," said Flaherty, hurriedly, and the men
went their different ways.

O'Connell did everything for Peg since she was an infant. His were
the only hands to tend the little body, to wash her and dress her,
and tie up her little shoe-laces, and sit beside her in her childish
sicknesses. He taught her to read and to write and to pray. As she
grew bigger he taught her the little he knew of music and the great
deal he knew of poetry. He instilled a love of verse into her little
mind. He never tired of reading her Tom Moore and teaching her his
melodies. He would make her learn them and she would stand up
solemnly and recite or sing them, her quaint little brogue giving
them an added music. O'Connell and Peg were inseparable.

One wonderful year came to Peg when she was about fourteen.

O'Connell had become recognised as a masterly exponent of the
particular form of Land Act that would most benefit Ireland.

It was proposed that he should lecture right through the country,
wherever they would let him, and awaken amongst the more violent
Irish, the recognition that legislative means were surer of securing
the end in view, than the more violent ones of fifteen years before.