"I have often doubted," he said, with something like a sigh as he stretched his legs across the platform and waited; "I should like to believe--as you do. Can you make me?" "I will tell you a story," she said again. Her voice was low and sweet. It seemed in tune with the gathering darkness, the falling of the water, the evening calm and the burdened heart of the man. "When I was yet very small I began wondering and asking questions about things I could neither understand nor believe. It was while we were back in Kentucky I was sent to the pasture to watch the cows. There was a pond in the low end of the pasture where the reeds grew and where all was very quiet around. I was sitting beside the water, wondering perhaps if something strange and beautiful would appear from its depths as in fairy stories, when I saw a hideous, mud-colored grub creeping slowly above the water-line and climbing the reed. I was tempted to knock it back out of sight, it was so ugly. But I only watched. Very soon its muddy shell cracked open, something with wings crept out and the shell fell back to the place from which it had come. The new creature spread its wings slowly. They dried, turning as they did so into silver gauze, which he spread out like bits of shining lace. Then he went skimming away across the pond and over the dandelions and grass flowers, even over the heads of the grazing cows. In all my life I had never dreamed of anything so wonderful nor had any fairy story ever been told me that was so marvelous as what I had just seen. I looked back to the pond. A ray of sun was shining so that I could see the bottom. The cast-off shell was lying there in the mud. There were others around it like it, except they had life in them. They crept up and maybe looked at the empty shell. One touched it and turned away. "After a time the new creature with the silvery wings came again and rested on the reed. His reflection showed in the water. Perhaps he could see those who were as he had been, creeping in the mud. But he had no way of telling them that they would one day become creatures of the upper world of sun-shine and flowers and sky, for the only world they knew was mud. And then I thought of people--and that we are yet dwelling in the world of mud. The Bible calls it the 'earth.' It says 'there is a natural body'--do you remember--'There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The first is of the earth--earthy.' And it is not until we have left the old body that we can know the life on wings--the life up in God's big fields of sun-shine that we call heaven.