"This," said she, "is a sort of watch night, for Jesus, my good friend John, and the lesser lights. I somehow believe if we keep awake and think about them it mitigates their weariness, even though they do not understand the source from which relief comes. Do you believe in such a theory as that, Joseph?" "Really, Magdalene, I do not know whether I do or not, but one thing I do know, we are all glad to hear you talk and receive your opinions, besides I have had much undisputed evidence that there is some sort of communication between minds, or souls of near affinity, and my experience teaches me that this is sometimes kept up after death. Now please go on and tell us some more things which we have never heard about yourself, when a child." A NAUGHTY MAID "Well," she began, "as I have told you before, Jesus always manifested an interest in me, by mentioning my virtues and indulging me in so many ways. However, naughty as I was, he was still my friend and called me Mary. Many a time, when I was a little tot, I have cried myself to sleep with both arms around his neck. "How well I remember one evening when I had become so big that he could not fondle me any more, how he stood between me and prison, and how severely he admonished me when it was all over. It was while I was living in Nazareth that one dark night I headed a group of dare-devil maids to steal grapes from the garden of old Benjamin, the potter. Well, we got caught, and when I found that, not only myself, but I had gotten all the others into a scrape, I run over to Ruth with my troubles, as I always did, and she got Jesus to go right down and see old Ben and then she listened behind the screen and heard Jesus say something like this: 'Terror to the neighborhood, Benjamin; why, you talk like a wooden man. Magdalene is not yet in her teens, and you ought not to call it stealing for maids of that age to help themselves to a little fruit when they are hungry.' In that way he hammered at the crusty old miser until he gave in. Then, after Ruth had told me all about it, Jesus got us girls together and oh, the picture he did paint about thieves, which set us all to crying but me, and when I laughed he said something about there being oceans of room for improvement in me yet. "Then, after the girls had gone home, wondering at their lucky escape, he and Ruth took me home, and while we stood in the moonlight by our old gate, Ruth told him all, how she had overheard him convincing old Ben that it was nothing, and had told me all about it, which made me laugh when he made it out so awful to us. "Before leaving me, he, taking my hand in his, with his other arm around Ruth, talked to us about being true, and showed us that the course he had taken in my behalf was just the course God was taking with all those he loved and that God's power was so great that one was always safe in his keeping, not only in this life, but even in death, one would come out victorious, if they trusted in him.