"Very likely he would," I said. "At any rate the angels would think how the other animals would be torn to pieces if the tiger got hold of them; and they would think of what would happen to men. Perhaps they would imagine some poor Hindu woman, with her baby on her back going through a path in the jungle, and how the tiger might leap out suddenly and tear them both to pieces. The angels couldn't understand how God could bear to make any animal so cruel, or how He could be willing to have anything so wicked in the world. They would be so sorry for all the suffering that was to come that they would throw down their spears and not be able to keep back the tears." "But angels wouldn't have spears, would they?" I went to a shelf of the library in which we were talking and took down a volume in which I found a picture of St. Michael in full armor. "It is like the fire from the stars," I said. "Of course nobody ever saw an angel to know how he would look, but to show how strong and powerful an angel might be, a good many men that make pictures have painted them like knights." "But men that had spears wouldn't cry; I shouldn't think angels would." "Even the strongest men cry sometimes, my boy; only it has to be something tremendous to make them. A thing that would make the angels 'water heaven with their tears' must be something so terrible that you couldn't tell how sad it was." "Well, anyway, I'd rather be a tiger than a lamb," he proclaimed rather unexpectedly. "Very likely," I assented, "but I think you'd rather have a lamb come after Baby Lou than a tiger." "Oh, I wouldn't want a tiger to get Baby Lou!" he cried with a tremor. "I suppose that is the way the angels might feel at the idea of the tiger's killing anybody," I rejoined. With a lad somewhat older one would have gone on to develop the thought that to the watching angels the tiger, leaping out fierce and bloodthirsty from the hand of the Creator, would be like the incarnation of evil, and that in their weeping was represented all the sorrowful problem of the existence of evil in the Universe; but this on the present occasion I did not touch upon. "So the angels," I went on, "couldn't keep back their tears; but what did God do?" "Why, He smiled!" the boy answered, evidently with astonishment at the thought which now for the first time came home to him. "I shouldn't think He'd have smiled." "When you were so disappointed the other day because the carriage was broken and you couldn't go over to the lake in it, do you remember that Uncle Jo laughed?" "Oh, he knew we could go in his automobile." "He knew." "Yes, he knew," began the boy, "and so—" He stopped, and looked at me with a sudden soberness. "What did God know?" he asked seriously. "He must have known that somehow everything was right, don't you think? He knew why He had made the tiger, just as He knew why He had made the lamb, and so He could see that everything would be as it should be in the end." "But—but—"