the tears
filled his eyes to remember how little he had enjoyed singing that day.

"How glad the little children of Jerusalem must have been," he thought,
"that they sang to Jesus when they could. I suppose they never could
again; for the next Friday He was dead. Oh, suppose He never let me
sing to Him again!"

[Illustration: "'LOOK AT ME,' THE OLD MAN SAID."]

And tears and repressed sobs came fast at the thought, and he murmured
aloud, thinking no one was near:

"Dear Savior, only let me sing once more here in church to you, and I
will think of no one but you; not of the boys who laugh at me, nor the
people who praise me, nor the Cistercians, nor the archduchess, nor
even the dear choir-master, but only of you, of you, and perhaps of
mother and Lenichen. I could not help that, and you would not mind it.
You and they love me so much more than any one, and I love you really
so much more than all besides. Only believe it, and try me once more."

As he finished, in his earnestness, the child spoke quite loud, and
from a dark corner in the shadow of a pillar suddenly arose a very old
man in a black monk's robe, with snow-white hair, and drew close to
him, and laid his hand on his shoulder and said:

"Fear not, my son. I have a message for thee."

At first, Gottlieb was much frightened, and then, when he heard the
kind, tremulous old voice, and saw the lovely, tender smile on the
wrinkled, pallid old face, he thought God must really have sent him an
angel at last, though certainly not because he was good.

"Look around on these lofty arches, and clustered columns, and the long
aisles, and the shrines of saints, and the carved wreaths of flowers
and fruits, and the glorious altar! Are these wonderful to thee?
Couldst thou have thought of them, or built them?"

"I could as easily have made the stars, or the forests!" said the
child.

"Then look at me," the old man said, with a gentle smile on his
venerable face, "a poor worn-out old man, whom no one knows. This
beautiful house was in my heart before a stone of it was reared. God
put it in my heart. I planned it all. I remember this place a heap of
poor cottages as small as thine, and now it is a glorious house of
God. And I was what they called the master-builder. Yet no man knows
me, or says, 'Look at him!' They look at the cathedral, God's house;
and that makes me glad in my inmost soul. I prayed that I might be
nothing, and all the glory be His; and He has gra