“Now I do not know what you think of this, but I know what my friend thought of it, and what I myself think of it. But before he went home he went first to the cottage where the boy lived and found him as usual tethered in the corner, with his grandmother nodding before the fire. The boy would do nothing but snort and stamp: and the grandmother could only say that ten minutes ago the boy had run in and gone straight to his corner as usual. The squire asked whether the boy had been trusted with a child by any one; but the grandmother said it was impossible. Nor indeed did he ever after hear a word of a child having been missed on that afternoon. “Then, before he went home, he went to the little church, already decorated for the festival, and there with the fragrance of the holly and yew in the air about him, and the glimmer of a candle near the altar where the church-cleaner was sweeping, he praised the Holy Child whose Birth-night it was, and who had not disdained to lie in a manger and be adored by the beasts of the stall. “The following morning on his way back from church he went to the quarry again with his friend to show him what he had seen; but the manger and the holly-berries and crumpled taper were all gone, and there was nothing to see but the iron staple and the platform beaten hard and flat.” We had reached the avenue of pines by now that led to the house, and turned in by the little garden-gate. “The story seems to show,” the priest added, “that intellect has not much to do with the knowledge of God; and that the things which He hides from the wise and prudent He reveals to babes.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Traveller ------------------------------------------------------------------------ “I am amazed, not that the Traveller returns from that Bourne, but that he returns so seldom.” _The Pilgrims’ Way._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Traveller ON one of these evenings as we sat together after dinner in front of the wide open fireplace in the central room of the house, we began to talk on that old subject––the relation of Science to Faith.