d he couldn't help takin' notice. He
tried not to hear it, but he had to. 'T was a little child a-cryin' as
if it had lost its way and was scaret, and the man found he couldn't
stand it somehow. Mebbe the reason was he'd had a little boy of his own
once, and he lost him. Now I think on 't, that was one o' the things he
blamed on God, and thought about when he looked at the Stone Head.
Anyway, he couldn't stand this cryin' that time, and he started up, and,
fust thing he knowed, he'd opened the door and gone out. He hadn't been
out in the sunshine and the air for a long spell, and it made his head
swimmy at fust. But he heerd the little cryin' ag'in, and he run along
on to find the child. But he couldn't find it; every time he'd think he
was close to it, he'd hear the cryin' a little further off. And he'd go
on and on, a-stumblin' over stones and fallin' over logs and a-steppin'
into holes, but stickin' to it, and forgettin' everything only that
little cryin' voice ahead of him. Seems 's if he jest must find that
little lost boy or girl, 's if he'd be more 'n willin' to give up his own
poor lonesome old life to save that child. And, jest 's he come to
thinkin' that, he see somethin' ahead of him movin' and in a minute he
knowed he'd found the lost child.

'Fore he thought what he was a-doin', he got down on his knees jest's he
used to do 'fore he got angry at God, and was goin' to thank him for
helpin' him to save that child. Then he rec'lected. It come back to him
who God was, and how he'd seed his head, with the ha'sh stony face up on
the mountain, and that made him look up to see it ag'in.

And oh! what do you think he see? There was the same head up there,--he
couldn't make a mistake about that,--but the face, oh! the face was so
diff'ent. It wasn't ha'sh nor hard nor dark any more. There was such a
lovin', beautiful, kind sort o' look on it now. Some ways it made the
man think a mite of the way his father, that had died ever so long ago,
used to look at him when he was a boy, and had been bad, and then was
sorry and 'shamed. Oh, 't was the beautif'lest face you never see! "Oh!
what ever does it mean?" says the man out loud. "What's changed that
face so? Oh! what in the world's made it so diff'ent?" And jest that
minute a Angel come up close to him. 'T was a little young Angel, and I
guess mebbe 't was what he'd took for a lost child, and that he'd been
follerin' so fur. And the Angel says, "The face ain't changed a