s mamma called
him to breakfast.

He was afraid to say anything about it at the table for fear of being
laughed at. But he was full of what the walking-stick said. And at family
worship his father read the twentieth chapter of Acts. When he came to
the part about its being more blessed to give than to receive, Willie
said, "That's what the cane said."

"What did you say?" asked his father.

"I was only thinking out loud," said Willie.

"Don't think out loud while I am reading," said Mr. Blake.

Willie did not find time to look any further for the other verses. He
wished his father had happened on them instead of the first text which
the cane quoted.

In church he kept thinking all the time about the cane. "Now what could
it mean by the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter?
There isn't anything in the Bible against giving away presents to one's
friends. It was only a dream anyhow, and maybe there's nothing in it."

But he forgot the services, I am sorry to say, in his thoughts. At last
Mr. Blake arose to read his text. Willie looked at him, but thought of
what the cane said. But what was it that attracted his attention so
quickly?

"The twelfth and thirteenth verses----"

"Twelfth and thirteenth!" said Willie to himself.

"Of the fourteenth chapter," said the minister.

"Fourteenth chapter!" said Willie, almost aloud.

"Of Luke."

Willie was all ears, while Mr. Blake read: "Then said he also to him that
bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends,
nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they
also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest
a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind."

"That's it!" he said, half aloud, but his mother jogged him.

Willie had never listened to a sermon as he did to that. He stopped two
or three times to wonder whether the cane had been actually about to
repeat his father's text to him, or whether he had not heard his father
repeat it at some time, and had dreamed about it.

I am not going to tell you much about Mr. Blake's sermon. It was a sermon
that he and the walking-stick had prepared while they were going round
among the poor. I think Mr. Blake did not strike his cane down on the
sidewalk for nothing. Most of that sermon must have been hammered out in
that way, when he and the walking-stick were saying, "Something must be
done!" For that was just what that s