"I can run too. If I couldn't, nobody would look at me." "The more I look at you the more I think of Pauline. It's a long time since she went away," said the Shepherd. "We must all pray for her." "Not I," said the little pine bureau. "Do you see that long scratch on my side? She did it with a hat pin when I belonged to her mother, and she used to keep her dolls in my lower drawer." Mr. Bloggs assumed a look of great alertness as if lie spied the enemy. "What's the use of worrying?" he quoted. "You'd better lie down and cover yourself up or you'll never live to see her or the summer either," the clock warned the Shepherd. Then Bob would lie down quickly and draw the clothes over his shoulders and sing of the Good King Wenceslas and The First Noël which Miss Betsy Singleton had taught him at Christmas time. All this is important only as showing how a poor lad, of a lively imagination, was wont to spend his lonely hours. He needed company and knew how to find it. Christmas Day, Judge Crooker had presented him with a beautiful copy of Raphael's _Madonna and Child_. "It's the greatest theme and the greatest picture this poor world of ours can boast of," said the Judge. "I want you to study the look in that mother's face, not that it is unusual. I have seen the like of it a hundred times. Almost every young mother with a child in her arms has that look or ought to have it--the most beautiful and mysterious thing in the world. The light of that old star which led the wise men is in it, I sometimes think. Study it and you may hear voices in the sky as did the shepherds of old." So the boy acquired the companionship of those divine faces that looked down at him from the wall near his bed and had something to say to him every day.