Miss Barry was talking to her boys one Sunday; “Boys, you have had an Up-the-Ladder Club this past year, and I hope it has not been simply a play-ladder, but while playing you have also done something else.  I think you have done a good work for temperance, and you have been kind to another in trouble.  I think you have tried to keep your badge clean, and not stain it by bad words.  You have tried to get hold of some useful knowledge through your club.  All that is excellent as far as it goes.  But I am thinking, while you are on this ladder, whether there may not be a round you haven’t touched, and yet one you ought to put your foot on.  Between this time and next Sunday, please think what that other round may be, the round higher up.”

The boys looked sober, but no one made a reply.

“The round higher up,” Charlie would sometimes say to himself during the week.

Sometimes in the midst of his play and his studies, that thought would visit him, “the round higher up.”  It came to him in his dreams.  Looking up, he saw a silver ladder and it stretched above him, reaching at last a beautiful palace.  Over the palace, flashed out, in letters of gold, the words, “God’s Palace.”  But what was it Charlie saw not far from this ladder?  Another, but O, so mean and little!  Charlie knew it.

“My ladder!” he shouted.  “Let me see how many rounds are there!”

“I think there is room for a round higher up,” said a voice.  “That, as it is, wont touch God’s Palace.”

Startled by the sound Charlie awoke.

The next Sunday Miss Barry said:  “Boys, I don’t think I need ask about the round higher up which your ladder needs.  You understand me, and I want you to put it in.  We never can climb very high, unless our life is pure and lovely and noble.  It must be like Christ’s life, and filled with the beautiful thoughts and purposes he had.  That is the round higher up we need.”

These words stirred Charlie still more deeply.  He thought about that round higher up.  If he could only put it into his ladder and get his feet on it!  One night he went to his little bedroom, thinking still about the round higher up.  He could lie in bed and look up to the white, silver stars that, like ladder-rounds, seemed to stretch across the sky in lines going higher and higher.  If he only had rounds by which he could climb as high as they, his ladder would be tall enough.  But how find and where get “the round higher up?” Once more he dreamed and he was looking again at a ladder that starting on the ground stretched up a little way and then suddenly stopped.

“My ladder!” exclaimed Charlie.  Then it seemed to him as if above his ladder he saw a bright, beautiful, silver round, but it was up so high he could not reach it!  Looking at it, longing to plant his feet upon it, some one seemed to approach Charlie whom he immediately knew, because he resembled pictures in the old family Bible at Aunt Stanshy’s.  He had a shepherd’s crook in his hand, and there was a crown of thorns on his head.