never look as
if they wanted to take anything of anybody. So he went and sat on
their own stone steps, for they also lived on the market-place.

The steps lay in the shadow, and it was very cold there. The little
fellow leaned his head against the railing, drew up his legs and
made himself comfortable. For a little while he watched the
sunlight dance out in the market-place and the boys running and
spinning tops--then he shut his eyes and went to sleep.

He must have slept an hour. When he awoke he did not feel so well
as when he fell asleep; everything felt so dreadfully uncomfortable.
He went in to his mother crying, and his mother saw that he was ill
and put him to bed. And in a couple of days the boy was dead.

But that is not the end of his story. It happened that his mother
mourned for him from the depths of her heart with a sorrow which
defies years and death. His mother had several other children, many
cares occupied her time and thoughts, but there was always a corner
in her heart where her son Reuben dwelt undisturbed. He was ever
alive to her. When she saw a group of children playing in the
market-place, he too was running there, and when she went about her
house, she believed fully and firmly that the little boy was still
sitting and sleeping out on those dangerous stone steps. Certainly
none of her living children were so constantly in her thoughts as
her dead one.

Some years after his death little Reuben had a sister, and when she
grew to be old enough to run out on the market-place and spin tops,
it happened that she too sat down on the stone steps to rest. But
her mother felt instantly as if some one had pulled her skirt. She
came out and seized the little sister so roughly, when she lifted
her up, that she remembered it as long as she lived.

And as little did she forget how strange her mother's face was and
how her voice trembled, when she said: "Do you know that you once
had a little brother, whose name was Reuben, and he died because he
sat on these stone steps and caught cold? You do not want to die
and leave your mother, Berta?"

Brother Reuben soon became just as living to his brothers and
sisters as to his mother. She was able to make them see with her
eyes and they too soon saw him sitting out on the stone steps. And
it naturally never occurred to them to sit down there. Yes,
whenever they saw any one sitting on stone steps, or on a stone
railing, or on a stone by the roadside, they fel