lous,' answered Peter, stroking his white beard. 'No doubt the
nuts were given as a miserly payment of some service you did her.'

"'No, no,' the angel answered decidedly.

"'Well, tell us how it happened then,' the apostle commanded, and the
dear little soul obeyed:

"'My sick mother and I lived in the city all alone, for father was dead.
Just before Christmas we had nothing more to eat. So mother, though she
lay in bed and her head and hands were burning, made some little sheep
of bits of wood and cotton and I carried them to the Christmas market.
There I sat on some steps and offered them for sale to the passers-by;
but nobody wanted them. Hours passed, and it was very cold; the open
wound in my knee, which no one saw, pained me so, and the frost in my
fingers and toes burned and itched dreadfully. Evening came, the lamps
were lighted, but I dared not go home; for only one person had thrown
a copper into my lap, and I needed more to buy a bit of bread and a few
coals. My own pangs hurt me, but that mother lay at home alone, with
no one to hand her anything, or support her when her breathing became
difficult, hurt me still more. I could hardly bear to sit on the cold
steps any longer, and my eyes were blind with tears. A barrel was set
down in front of the house, and while a clerk was rolling it over the
sidewalk into the shop, the stream of passers was stopped. That woman
there--I remember her well--stood still in front of me. I offered her
one of my sheep, and looked at her through my tears. She seemed so hard
and stern, that I thought: 'She won't give me anything.' But she did.
It seemed suddenly as if her face grew softer, and her eyes kinder. She
glanced at me, and before I knew it, she had put her hand in the bag
which she carried on her arm, and thrown the nuts into my lap. The cask
had been rolled into the shop by this time, and the throng of people
carried her along. She tried to stop. It was not easy, and she only did
it to toss me a second, third, and fourth handful of the most beautiful
walnuts. I can still see it all, as if it were to-day! Then she felt in
her pocket, probably to get some money for me, but the press of people
was too strong for her to stand against it longer. I doubt if she heard
that I thanked her.'

"Here the angel broke off, and threw a kiss to the condemned woman, and
St. Peter asked her how it happened that she, who had been so deaf to
all appeals from the poor, had been so sweetl