Page:The most ancient lives of Saint Patrick - O'Leary.djvu/320

 horses had begun to feed, a certain wicked and perverse plebeian, the owner of the place, rushed forward in the fury of anger to expel him forth. And first he attacked the saint with reproachful words, and at length he cast stones at the horses and drove them from the field: wherefore the hurt done unto them, increased the injury and the affront offered unto their master. And as Saint Patrick was one, and chief among those horses, with which according to the prophet Habacuc the Lord made his way in the sea, therefore was the Lord wroth at an injury offered unto him, and therefore at his command the meadow withered up, and the sea flowing forward covered it, and it remained unfruitful for ever. Fitting and just was this judgment of God, that the people which hated him, and refused his servant one blade of grass, should lose the whole harvest; and that as this man despitefully entreated Saint Patrick, and drove him from his field, he should thenceforward lose the place for which so contentiously he had striven.

And one who had long time been a servant unto many evil-doers, hearing of the virtues and the miracles of Saint Patrick, came unto him, for the purpose of contending with him in working signs. And many false signs did he multiply, the which the saint, having prayed and made the sign of the cross, dispersed. Then the magician seeing all his inventions to be frustrated, required of Patrick that he should work signs to evince the power of his God; and the