each other through the
flowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tall
bulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go seaward in the sun.

No anger had ever separated them; no cloud had ever come between them;
no roughness on the one side, no faithlessness on the other, had ever
obscured their perfect love and trust. All through their short lives
they had done their duty as it had come to them, and had been happy in
the mere sense of living, and had begrudged nothing to any man or beast,
and had been quite content because quite innocent. And in the faintness
of famine and of the frozen blood that stole dully and slowly through
their veins, it was of the days they had spent together that they
dreamed, lying there in the long watches of the night of the Noel.

Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through
the vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had broken
through the clouds; the snow had ceased to fall; the light reflected
from the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell through
the arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy on his
entrance had flung back the veil: the Elevation and the Descent of the
Cross were for one instant visible as by day.

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them: the tears of a
passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face.

"I have seen them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long--light,
clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne of
Heaven.

Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great darkness covered the
face of Christ.

The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog.

"We shall see His face--_there_," he murmured; "and He will not part us,
I think; He will have mercy."

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp
found them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen
into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas
morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying
thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the
great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
thorn-crowned head of the God