Page:The most ancient lives of Saint Patrick - O'Leary.djvu/270

 seed shall stand fixed; yet shall he be one of the chiefs of the land, and very needful shall he be unto the king and unto the kingdom." And what the saint foretold without doubt happened.

And the aforementioned Mel, a man of exceeding desert, who with his most holy brothers, Munius and Kiochus, had come from Britannia unto Hibernia, being promoted by Saint Patrick himself unto the episcopal degree, became the assistant in the preaching. And he, like the Apostle Paul, labored to live by the labor of his own hands; and what was given unto him by the rich bestowed he on the poor. And with this blessed man, as being her nephew, Lupita, the sister of Saint Patrick, abided in one house (for such was the custom of the primitive church), that by his conversation and example she might profit in the exercise of all holy duties. And after some time had passed, when the pious prelate, as he was wont, would arise in the middle of the night to confess unto the Lord, this holy woman would compose herself to sleep and cover herself with the skins in his bed. And they suspected not that any evil suspicion would be formed thereof, for they accounted of the minds of others from the purity of their own conscience. But some one, holding this her familiarity with the bishop to be naught, divulged it abroad. And as