nging like fun, whatever
'tis. I mean to peek in--might _go_ in; no harm done in taking a look.
'Tain't anyways likely that it blows in there as it does out here. Tode
and me will just take a look, we will."

And he pushed open the door and slipped into the nearest seat by the
fire just as the singing was concluded, and the Rev. John Birge began to
read; and the words he read were about that strange old story of the
great company and the lack of food, and the lad with the five barley
loaves and two small fishes, and the multitude that were fed, and the
twelve baskets of fragments that remained--story familiar in all its
details to every Sabbath-school scholar in the land, but utterly new to
Tode, falling on his ear for the first time, bearing all the charm of a
fairy tale to him. There was just one thing that struck this ignorant
boy as very strange, that a company of men and women, some of them
gray-headed, should spend their time in coming together that stormy
evening, and reading over and talking about so utterly improbable a
tale. He listened eagerly to see what might be the clew to this mystery.

"We are wont to say," began Mr. Birge, "that the age of miracles is
past; yet if we knew in just what mysterious, unknown paths God leads
the children of this day to himself, I think some of their experiences
would seem to us no less miraculous than is this story which we are
considering to-night."

No clew here to the mystery; only a number of words which Tode did not
understand, and something about God, which he could not see had anything
to do with the fairy story. I wonder if we Christian people ever fully
realize how utterly ignorant the neglected poor are of Bible truth. One
more ignorant in the matter than was Tode can hardly be imagined. He
knew, to be sure, that there was a day called Sunday, and that stores
and shops as a general rule were closed on that day, just why he would
have found very difficult to explain. He knew that there were such
buildings as churches, and that these were opened on these same Sundays,
and that well-dressed people went into them, but they had nothing
whatever to do with _him_. Oh no, neither had Sunday nor churches. He
knew in a vague general way that there was a Being called God, who
created all things, and that the aforesaid well-dressed people were in
some way connected with him; but it chanced, oh, bitter chance, that
there had never come to him the slightest intimation that God