At last there was an end of endurance; the hours lifted their leaden wings and hurried away; the old midwife changed to a dragon-faced butterfly, and I knew no more till the dawn and the snow spread a pale light over the world outside. Within, the fires still blazed, but the herb kettle was gone and the ring of ghosts coals lay whitening in their ashes where it spouted and steamed; the old hag sat asleep in the chimney corner, with her hands hanging down, her head thrown back, and her warped mouth gaping wide at the rafters above. Over a little table by the door a fine white tablecloth was spread. I wondered at it dimly and what it concealed. I felt William's shaggy head bowed upon the bed and a peace in my body akin to the peace of death. Laboriously my eyes traveled back to the fine white cloth over the table. I knew all about it, but could not remember. Only, nothing in the world mattered to me but that, whatever it was, under the cloth on the table. Presently, soft as a shade returns, it came to me, and I knew the little shape, barely curving the cloth, was my baby. Grief was an emotion I had not the strength to afford. I closed my eyes and felt tears press through the lids, and then a gruff voice sounded close to me on the other side of the bed. "Thank God!" Opening my eyes again with a great effort and looking up I beheld him, the old, burly country doctor bending above me, with his warm fingers on my wrist. But now a great emergency confronted me. My guardian angel, who has never ceased to be very high-church, urged me to meet it. "William, William," I whispered, and felt his kiss answer me, "he must be baptized!" "But he is dead, my darling!" he replied. "Not really dead, William; he must be alive somewhere or I cannot bear it, and I cannot have him going where he will be, unbaptized." So it was done, the doctor, the old woman and William standing around the little bier, and William saying the holy words himself. And there, high up on the mountain under the very eave of Heaven, swinging deep in his brown cradle of earth, the mother angels will find him, the little itinerant, with his dust properly baptized, when they come on the last day to awaken and gather up those very least babies who died so soon they will not understand the resurrection call when they hear it. After that we took more interest in the children. They seemed real to us and nearer, whereas, before, they had simply passed in and out before us like little irresponsible figureheads of the future, with whom some other preacher would contend later. We never asked why it was that they were invariably the first to come to the altar when invitations were extended to sinners during revival season. But it was curious, the way the innocent little things invariably hived there, no matter how awful and accusing the invitation would be--to those "dead in trespasses and sins, who felt themselves lost and undone."