the piano was being played and somebody sang a song.

"This is Paradise," said the voice within him.

The old man stood a long time and watched, so long that in the end he
broke down, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, and all the misery
of life.

Then the gate was opened and a little girl in a white dress came out.
She carried a silver tray in her hand, and on the tray stood a glass
filled with wine, the reddest wine which the old man had ever seen. And
the child went up to the old man and said:

"Come now, daddy, you must drink this!"

The old man took the glass and drank. It was the rich man's wine, which
had grown a long way off in the sunny South; and it tasted like the
sweetness of a good life when it is at its very best.

"This is compassion," said his own old broken voice. "But you, child, in
your ignorance, you wouldn't have brought me this wine if you had known
who I am. Do you know what I am?"

"Yes, you are a prisoner, I know that," replied the little girl.

When the old stone man went back, he was no longer a man of stone, for
something in him had begun to quicken.

And as he passed a steep incline, he saw a tree with many trunks, which
looked like a shrub. It was more beautiful than the others; it was a
buckthorn tree, but the old man did not know it. A restless little bird,
black and white like a swallow, fluttered from branch to branch. The
peasants call it tree-swallow, but its name is something else. And it
sat in the foliage and sang a sweet sad song:

In mud, in mud, in mud you died, From mud, from mud, from mud you rose.

It was exactly as it had been in his dream. And now the old man
understood what the tree-swallow meant.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TOBACCO SHED

Listen to the story of a young opera-singer who was so beautiful that
the people in the street turned round to stare at her when she passed.
And she was not only very beautiful, but she had a better voice than
most singers.

The conductor of the orchestra, who was also a composer, came and laid
his heart and all his possessions at her feet. She took his possessions,
but left his heart lying in the dust.

Now she was famous, more famous than any other singer; she drove through
the streets in her elegant victoria, and nodded to her portrait, which
greeted her from all the stationers' and booksellers' shop windows.

And as her fame grew, her picture appeared on post-cards, soap and cigar
boxes. Finally her portrait w