“Then God will let me sing here next Easter!” he said, looking confidingly in the old man’s face.

“Thou shalt sing, and I shall see, and I shall hear thee, but thou wilt not hear or see me!” said the old man, taking both the dimpled hands in one of his.  “And the blessed Lord will listen, as to the little children in Jerusalem of old.  And we shall be His dear, happy children for evermore.”

Gottlieb went home and told his mother.  And they both agreed, that if not an angel, the old man was as good as an angel, and was certainly a messenger of God.

To have been the master-builder of the cathedral of which it was Magdalis’s glory and pride that her husband had carved a few of the stones!

The master-builder of the cathedral, yet finding his joy and glory in being a little child of God!

CHAPTER VI.

The “silent week” that followed was a solemn time to the mother and the boy.

Every day, whatever time could be spared from the practice with the choir, and from helping in the little house and with his mother’s wood-carving, or from playing with Lenichen in the fields, Gottlieb spent in the silent cathedral, draped as it was in funereal black for the sacred life given up to God for man.

“How glad,” he thought again and again, “the little children of Jerusalem must have been that they sang when they could to the blessed Jesus!  They little knew how soon the kind hands that blessed them would be stretched on the cross, and the kind voice that would not let their singing be stopped would be moaning ‘I thirst.’”

But he felt that he, Gottlieb, ought to have known; and if ever he was allowed to sing his hosannas in the choir again, it would feel like the face of the blessed Lord himself smiling on him, and His voice saying, “Suffer this little one to come unto me.  I have forgiven him.”

He hoped also to see the master-builder again; but nevermore did the slight, aged form appear in the sunshine of the stained windows, or in the shadows of the arches he had planned.

And so the still Passion week wore on.

Until once more, the joy-bells pealed out on the blessed Easter morning.

The city was full of festivals.  The rich were in their richest holiday raiment, and few of the poor were so poor as not to have some sign of festivity in their humble dress and on their frugal tables.

Mother Magdalis was surprised by finding at her bedside a new dress such as befitted a good burgher’s daughter, sent secretly the night before from Ursula by Hans and Gottlieb, with a pair of enchanting new crimson shoes for little Lenichen, which all but over-balanced the little maiden with the new sense of possessing something which must be a wonder and a delight to all beholders.

The archduke and the beautiful Italian archduchess had arrived the night before, and were to go in stately procession to the cathedral.  And Gottlieb was to sing in the choir, and afterward, on the Monday, to sing an Easter greeting for the archduchess at the banquet in the great town-hall.