Mollie smiled and sang softly to herself as she moved swiftly along the driveway leading to the beautiful Home. Let's see, she reflected. Just how many would it accommodate? Five--six hundred, now that the east wing was completed. Splutters had not seen it yet. He would be home soon for the holidays. How thrilled he would be. He was growing tall, he had written. He would be taller than she when they met again. She wondered if she would know him. Just beyond towered the massive building, surrounded by broad porches, sun parlors and gardens brilliant with flowers. Somewhere there was a fountain playing. Children of all sizes were running about the grounds. A beautiful little girl with clustering curls and most alluring dimples suddenly detached herself from the others and ran to meet Mollie. "Oh, Ma-Mollie!" she exclaimed, holding up her rosebud mouth for a kiss. "Isn't it a beautiful home!" "A home for little children is always a beautiful home if it is built for their happiness," Mollie replied with an adoring look that embraced the Home, the broad lawns and every child within sight or hearing. "And this," she said softly, half to herself and half to the child at her side, "is the great good that came out of all our suffering." For Mollie never forgot her wonderful experience that night in the barn loft when the Good Shepherd walked among the children while they slept and tenderly took one of them--the least one--into his arm. At the recollection she raised her eyes to where, near the entrance to this beautiful Home was a marble tablet on which were lettered the words: To The Least-Ones In Perpetuity. -------------- ADDENDUM Should it be suggested that the characters and incidents of this story are exaggerated or improbable, it is only necessary to refer to the newspapers of May 2nd, 1926, which published Associated Press accounts of the living counterpart of Peter Grimes and pictures of the children for whose care and maintenance he was paid by their widowed mother. That human counterpart of the ogre described in these pages did not die in a bog. He was sentenced to die on May 11, 1926 for the murder of one child and the mutilation of others. The verdict against him was reached on the first ballot by a jury of mountaineers from his own district and by whom, until his crimes were discovered, he had for years been considered harmless. The only reason why he did not conceal the evidence of his crimes in a bog was because there happened to be no bog on his premises.