The little Pilgrim was seized once more with mortal fear.  ‘O friend,’ she cried, ’I have done with pain.  Must I go and see others suffering and do nothing for them?’

’If anything comes into your heart to do or say, it will be well for them,’ the Sage replied:  and he took her by the hand and led her into a house she knew.  She began to know them all now, as her vision became accustomed to the atmosphere of the earth.  She perceived that the sun was shining, though it had appeared so dim, and that it was a clear summer morning, very early, with still the colors of the dawn in the east.  When she went indoors, at first she saw nothing, for the room was darkened, the windows all closed, and a miserable watch-light only burning.  In the bed there lay a child whom she knew.  She knew them all,—­the mother at the bedside, the father near the door, even the nurse who was flitting about disturbing the silence.  Her heart gave a great throb when she recognized them all; and though she had been glad for the first moment to think that she had come just in time to give welcome to a little brother stepping out of earth into the better country, a shadow of trouble and pain enveloped her when she saw the others and remembered and knew.  For he was their beloved child; on all the earth there was nothing they held so dear.  They would have given up their home and all they possessed, and become poor and homeless and wanderers with joy, if God, as they said, would have but spared their child.  She saw into their hearts and read all this there; and knowing them, she knew it without even that insight.  Everything they would have given up and rejoiced, if but they might have kept him.  And there he lay, and was about to die.  The little Pilgrim forgot all but the pity of it, and their hearts that were breaking, and the vacant place that was soon to be.  She cried out aloud upon the Father with a great cry.  She forgot that it was a grief to Him in His great glory to refuse.

There came no reply; but the room grew light as with a reflection out of heaven, and the child in the bed, who had been moving restlessly in the weariness of ending life, turned his head towards her, and his eyes opened wide, and he saw her where she stood.  He cried out, ’Look! mother, mother!’ The mother, who was on her knees by the bedside, lifted her head and cried, ‘What is it, what is it, O my darling?’ and the father, who had turned away his face not to see the child die, came nearer to the bed, hoping they knew not what.  Their faces were paler than the face of the dying, upon which there was light; but no light came to them out of the hidden heaven.  ‘Look! she has come for me,’ he said; but his voice was so weak they could not hear him, nor take any comfort.  At this the little Pilgrim put out her arms to him, forgetting in her joy the poor people who were mourning, and cried out, ’Oh, but I must go with him!  I must take him home!’ For this was her own work, and she thought of her wonderings and her questions no more.