At first the eager voice trembled for joy, in the verse he had to sing alone, and the choir-master's brows were knitted with anxiety. But it cleared and steadied in a moment, and soared with a fullness and freedom none had ever heard in it before, filling the arches of the cathedral and the hearts of all. And the beautiful archduchess bent over to see the child, and her soft, dark eyes were fixed on his face, as he sang, until they filled with tears; and, afterward, she asked who the mother of that little angel was. But the child's eyes were fixed on nothing earthly, and his heart was listening for another voice--the voice all who listen for shall surely hear. And it said in the heart of the child, that day: "Suffer the little one to come unto me. Go in peace. Thy sins are forgiven." A happy, sacred evening they spent that Easter in the hermit's cell, the mother and the two children, the boy singing his best for the little nest, as before for the King of kings. Still, a little anxiety lingered in the mother's heart about the pomp of the next day. But she need not have feared. When the archduchess had asked for the mother of the little chorister with the heavenly voice, the choir-master had told her what touched her much about the widowed Magdalis and her two children; and old Ursula and the master between them contrived that Mother Magdalis should be at the banquet, hidden behind the tapestry. And when Gottlieb came close to the great lady, robed in white, with blue feathery wings, to represent a little angel, and sang her the Easter greeting, she bent down and folded him in her arms, and kissed him. And then once more she asked for his mother, and, to Gottlieb's surprise and her own, the mother was led forward, and knelt before the archduchess. Then the beautiful lady beamed on the mother and the child, and, taking a chain and jewel from her neck, she clasped it round the boy's neck, and said, in musical German with a foreign accent: "Remember, this is not so much a gift as a token and sign that I will not forget thee and thy mother, and that I look to see thee and hear thee again, and to be thy friend." And as she smiled on him, the whole banqueting-hall--indeed, the whole world--seemed illuminated to the child. And he said to his mother as they went home: "Mother, surely God has sent us an angel at last. But, even for the angels, we will never forget His dear ravens. Wont old Hans be glad?" And the mother was glad; for she knew that God who giveth grace to the lowly had indeed blessed the lad, because all his gifts and honors were transformed, as always in the lowly heart, not into pride, but into love. But when the boy ran eagerly to find old Hans, to show him the jewel and tell him of the princely promises, Hans was nowhere to be found; not in the hermit's house, where he was to have met them and shared their little festive meal, nor at his own stall, nor in the hut in which he slept. Gottlieb's heart began to sink.