them, and sit down under a tree, and tell them one of his parables, and make them all more happy than words could say; and how sometimes he would send one out of the beautiful city, with a poem or tale to say to them, and bands of lovely music, more lovely than anything beside, except the sound of the Lord’s own voice.  “And what is more wonderful, the angels themselves come often and listen to us,” they said, “when we begin to talk and remind each other of the old time, and how we suffered heat and cold, and were bowed down with labor, and bending over the soil, and how sometimes the harvest would fail us, and sometimes we had not bread, and sometimes would hush the children to sleep because there was nothing to give them; and how we grew old and weary, and still worked on and on.”  “We are those who were old,” a number of them called out to her, with a murmuring sound of laughter, one looking over another’s shoulder.  And one woman said, “The angels say to us, ’Did you never think the Father had forsaken you and the Lord forgotten you?’” And all the rest answered as in a chorus, “There were moments that we thought this; but all the time we knew that it could not be.”  “And the angels wonder at us,” said another.  All this they said, crowding one before another, every one anxious to say something, and sometimes speaking together, but always in accord.  And then there was a sound of laughter and pleasure, both at the strange thought that the Lord could have forgotten them, and at the wonder of the angels over their simple tales.  And immediately they began to remind each other, and say, “Do you remember?” and they told the little Pilgrim a hundred tales of the hardships and troubles they had known, all smiling and radiant with pleasure; and at every new account the others would applaud and rejoice, feeling the happiness all the more for the evils that were past.  And some of them led her into their gardens to show her their flowers, and to tell her how they had begun to study and learn how colors were changed and form perfected, and the secrets of the growth and of the germ, of which they had been ignorant.  And others arranged themselves in choirs, and sang to her delightful songs of the fields, and accompanied her out upon her way, singing and answering to each other.  The difference between the simple folk and the greatness of the others made the little Pilgrim wonder and admire; and she loved them in her simplicity, and turned back many a time to wave her hand to them, and to listen to the lovely simple singing as it went further and further away.  It had an evening tone of rest and quietness, and of protection and peace.  “He leadeth me by the green pastures and beside the quiet waters,” she said to herself; and her heart swelled with pleasure to think that it was those who had been so old, and so weary and poor, who had this rest to console them for all their sorrows.