The Pilgrim looked at him with great wonder.  “Your brother, and you did not know him!”

And then he turned over the pages and showed her where the story was.

“You know,” he said, “that we who live here are not of your time, but have lived and lived here till the old life is far away and like a dream.  There were great tumults and fightings in our time, and it was settled by the prince of the place that our town was to be abandoned, and all the people left to the mercy of an enemy who had no mercy.  But every day as he rode out he saw at one door a child, a little fair boy, who sat on the steps, and sang his little song like a bird.  This child was never afraid of anything,—­when the horses pranced past him, and the troopers pushed him aside, he looked up into their faces and smiled.  And when he had anything, a piece of bread, or an apple, or a plaything, he shared it with his playmates; and his little face, and his pretty voice, and all his pleasant ways, made that corner bright.  He was like a flower growing there; everybody smiled that saw him.”

“I have seen such a child,” the little Pilgrim said.

“But we made no account of him,” said the historian.  “The Lord of the place came past him every day, and always saw him singing in the sun by his father’s door.  And it was a wonder then, and it has been a wonder ever since, why, having resolved upon it, that prince did not abandon the town, which would have changed all his fortune after.  Much had been made clear to me since I began to study, but not this:  till the Lord himself came to me and told me.  The prince looked at the child till he loved him, and he reflected how many children there were like this that would be murdered, or starved to death, and he could not give up the little singing boy to the sword.  So he remained; and the town was saved, and he became a great king.  It was so secret that even the angels did not know it.  But without that child the history would not have been complete.”

“And is he here?” the little Pilgrim said.

“Ah,” said the historian, “that is more strange still; for that which saved him was also to his harm.  He is not here.  He is Elsewhere.”

The little Pilgrim’s face grew sad; but then she remembered what she had been told.

“But you know,” she said, “that he is coming?”

“I know that our Father will never forsake him, and that everything that is being accomplished in him is well.”

“Is it well to suffer?  Is it well to live in that dark stormy country?  Oh, that they were all here, and happy like you!”

He shook his head a little and said,—­

“It was a long time before I got here; and as for suffering that matters little.  You get experience by it.  You are more accomplished and fit for greater work in the end.  It is not for nothing that we are permitted to wander; and sometimes one goes to the edge of despair—­”