re flying over me. I had been the means of saving them all;
but I was not able to survive the cold and fright, and so I have come
up here to the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but I am told it is
locked against such poor creatures as I. And now I have no longer a
home down yonder on the embankment, though that does not insure me any
admittance here."

At that moment the gate of heaven was opened, and an angel took the
old woman in. She dropped a straw; it was one of the pieces of straw
which had stuffed the bed to which she had set fire to save the lives
of many, and it had turned to pure gold, but gold that was flexible,
and twisted itself into pretty shapes.

"See! the poor old woman brought this," said the angel. "What dost
thou bring? Ah! I know well; thou hast done nothing--not even so much
as making a brick. If thou couldst go back again, and bring only so
much as that, if done with good intentions, it would be something: as
thou wouldst do it, however, it would be of no avail. But thou canst
not go back, and I can do nothing for thee."

Then the poor soul, the old woman from the house on the embankment,
begged for him.

"His brother kindly gave me all the stones with which I built my
humble dwelling. They were a great gift to a poor creature like me.
May not all these stones and fragments be permitted to value as one
brick for him? It was a deed of mercy. He is now in want, and this is
Mercy's home."

"Thy brother whom thou didst think the most inferior to thyself--him
whose honest business thou didst despise--shares with thee his
heavenly portion. Thou shalt not be ordered away; thou shalt have
leave to remain outside here to think over and to repent thy life down
yonder; but within this gate thou shalt not enter until in good works
thou hast performed _something_."

"I could have expressed that sentence better," thought the conceited
logician; but he did not say this aloud, and that was surely
already--SOMETHING.

_The Old Oak Tree's Last Dream._

A CHRISTMAS TALE.

There stood in a wood, high up on the side of a sloping hill near the
open shore, a very old oak tree. It was about three hundred and
sixty-five years old, but those long years were not more than as many
single rotations of the earth for us men. We are awake during the day,
and sleep during the night, and have then our dreams: with the tree it
is otherwise. A tree is awake for three quarters of a year. It only
sleeps in winter--