me, and with a soft blue mist rising up round about it.  Heaven forgive me!  I was punished for meddling with what Providence had sent for some better purpose than to be carried borne by an old woman like me, whom it had pleased Heaven to afflict with the loss of one leg, and the pain, ixpinse, and inconvenience of a wooden one.  Well, I was punished; covetousness had its reward; for, presently, the violet light got very pale, and then went out; and when I reached home, still holding in both hands all I had gathered up, and when I took it to the candle, it had burned into the red shell of a lobsky’s head, and its two black eyes poked up at me with a long stare—­and I may say, a strong smell, too—­enough to knock a poor body known.”

Great applause, and no little laughter, followed the conclusion of old Peggy’s story, but she did not join in the merriment.  She said it was all very well for young folks to laugh, but at her age she had enough to do to pray; and she had never said so many prayers, nor with so much fervency, as she had done since she received the blessed sight of the blue star on the Dust-heap, and the chastising rod of the lobster’s head at home.

Little Jem’s turn now came:  the poor lad was, however, so excited by the recollection of what his companions called “Jem’s Ghost,” that he was unable to describe it in any coherent language.  To his imagination it had been a lovely vision,—­the one “bright consummate flower” of his life, which he treasured up as the most sacred image in his heart.  He endeavored, in wild and hasty words, to set forth, how that he had been bred a chimney-sweep; that one Sunday afternoon he had left a set of companions, most on ’em sweeps, who were all playing at marbles in the church-yard, and he had wandered to the Dust-heap, where he had fallen asleep; that he was awoke by a sweet voice in the air, which said something about some one having lost her way!—­that he, being now wide awake, looked up, and saw with his own eyes a young Angel, with fair hair and rosy cheeks, and large white wings at her shoulders, floating about like bright clouds, rise out of the dust!  She had on a garment of shining crimson, which changed as he looked upon her to shining gold.  She then exclaimed, with a joyful smile, “I see the right way!” and the next moment the Angel was gone!

As the sun was just now very bright and warm for the time of year, and shining full upon the Dust-heap in its setting, one of the men endeavored to raise a laugh at the deformed lad, by asking him if he didn’t expect to see just such another angel at this minute, who had lost her way in the field on the other side of the heap; but his jest failed.  The earnestness and devout emotion of the boy to the vision of reality which his imagination, aided by the hues of sunset, had thus exalted, were too much for the gross spirit of banter, and the speaker shrunk back into his dust-shovel, and affected to be very assiduous in his work.