woman by the hand and carried her up to Heaven. That is why I say that fasting and alms-giving in honour of Our Lady are a right good work." So spake Mathias in his brown shirt. "Our dear woodman's wife, whom we are burying to-morrow, was also fond of fasting," said one little woman, "and very fond of giving." Father sobbed for emotion. The thought that his wife was now in Heaven lit a very welcome light in his sad heart. The hands of the old soot-browned clock upon the wall--the same which had faithfully told the hours, the joyful hours and the sorrowful, since the woodman's glad wedding-day; which pointed to the hour of one, early on Sunday morning, when the little boy was born; which, after many years, showed the hour of six, when the delivering angel passed through the room and pressed his kiss on the sufferer's forehead--the hands now met at twelve o'clock. And, when that departed life was thus measured, like a single day, from sunrise to sunset, my father said: "Boy, go outside to the cow-shed and lie down for a while in the straw and rest a bit. I will wake you when the time comes." I went outside, took a last look at the bier in the passage and then stepped out into the free, cold, starry night. The sickle of the moon had sunk behind the woods; it had sent its last beam gliding through the crevice of the door on the shroud that covered the bier: to-morrow, when it rose again, the poor creature would be lying in the dark earth. So now I lay in the shed on the straw, where my two brothers generally slept. The three chained oxen stood or lay beside me, grinding their teeth as they chewed the cud. It was warm and damp in the stable; and the moisture trickled from the half-rotten ceiling down on my straw couch.