"Well, deary, suppose you read what John says about the many mansions that they're getting ready for us." "John didn't say it, mother," answered Winny, gravely. "Jesus said it himself." "Yes, deary, but John heard him say it, and wrote it down for us." So Tode listened, and heard for the first time in his life these blessed words: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." Thus on, through the beautiful verses, until this: "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." "There, deary," said Winny's mother, "that will do. I want to stop there and think about it. Whenever I get more than usual trouble in my heart about Rick and Jim, I want to hear this chapter down to there, '_Whatsoever_ ye shall ask,' and it gives me a lift, like, and then I pray away." Could you imagine how you should feel if you had learned to love the Lord, and were as old as Tode was, and then should hear those words for the first time? The tears were following each other down his cheeks, and dropping on his hand. "Who does he mean?" he asked, eagerly. "Whose mansions be they that he's getting ready?" "Why, bless you, one of them is mine, and there'll be one ready for everybody who loves _him_." Tode's voice sank to a husky whisper. "Do you think there's one getting ready for me?" "There's no kind of doubt about it, not if you love the Lord Jesus. I suppose as soon as ever you made up your mind to love him the Lord said, 'Now I must get a place ready for Tode, for he's decided that he wants to come up here with me.'" Wiser brains than Tode's would doubtless have smiled at the old lady's original and perhaps untheological way of interpreting the truth; but he drank it in, and drew nearer to the true meaning of it than perhaps he would had it been learnedly explained. "I never thought about it before in my life," he said, gravely. "And so that's heaven? And there ain't any trouble there I heard Mr. Birge say once in his preaching." "Not a speck of trouble of any shape nor kind, nor nobody's wicked nor cross, and no bottles there, Tode, not a bottle." "How do you know?" "'Cause it says so right out, sharp and plain. 'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.' That's Bible words, and you and I know that where there's bottles, and folks give them to their neighbors, why there'll be drunkards." Tode nodded his head in solemn assent. Yes, he knew that better perhaps than his teacher. Then he asked: "And what more about heaven?"