poke hard words of her.

But one day, while grief and hunger gnawed her hollow frame, and she
heard her name mentioned and her story told to an innocent child, a
little girl, she became aware that the little one burst into tears at
the tale of the haughty, vain Inge.

"But will Inge never come up here again?" asked the little girl.

And the reply was, "She will never come up again."

"But if she were to say she was sorry, and to beg pardon, and say she
would never do so again?"

"Yes, then she might come; but she will not beg pardon," was the
reply.

"I should be so glad if she would," said the little girl; and she was
quite inconsolable. "I'll give my doll and all my playthings if she
may only come up. It's too dreadful--poor Inge!"

And these words penetrated to Inge's inmost heart, and seemed to do
her good. It was the first time any one had said, "Poor Inge," without
adding anything about her faults: a little innocent child was weeping
and praying for mercy for her. It made her feel quite strangely, and
she herself would gladly have wept, but she could not weep, and that
was a torment in itself.

While years were passing above her, for where she was there was no
change, she heard herself spoken of more and more seldom. At last, one
day a sigh struck on her ear: "Inge, Inge, how you have grieved me! I
said how it would be!" It was the last sigh of her dying mother.

Occasionally she heard her name spoken by her former employers, and
they were pleasant words when the woman said, "Shall I ever see thee
again, Inge? One knows not what may happen."

But Inge knew right well that her good mistress would never come to
the place where she was.

And again time went on--a long, bitter time. Then Inge heard her name
pronounced once more, and saw two bright stars that seemed gleaming
above her. They were two gentle eyes closing upon earth. So many years
had gone by since the little girl had been inconsolable and wept about
"poor Inge," that the child had become an old woman, who was now to be
called home to heaven; and in the last hour of existence, when the
events of the whole life stand at once before us, the old woman
remembered how as a child she had cried heartily at the story of Inge.

And the eyes of the old woman closed, and the eye of her soul was
opened to look upon the hidden things. She, in whose last thoughts
Inge had been present so vividly, saw how deeply the poor girl had
sunk, and burst into tear