to the pedestrian as an
indication of the spot in the tall, long, broad fence where a gate
might be sought. It was a small gate with a strong latch. It required
a strong hand to open it. At the sound of the click it made, the
little street ragamuffin, who stood near, peeping through the fence,
looked up. He had worked quite a hole between the boards with his
fingers. Such an anxious expression passed over his face that even
a casual passer-by could not help relieving it by a question--any
question:

"Is this the miracle chapel, little boy?"

"Yes, ma'am; yes." Then his expression changed to one of eagerness,
yet hardly less anxious.

"Here. Take this--"

He did not hold out his hand, the coin had to seek it. At its touch he
refused to take it.

"I ain't begging."

"What are you looking at so through the fence?" He was all sadness
now.

"Just looking."

"Is there anything to see inside?"

He did not answer. The interrogation was repeated.

"I can't see nothing. I'm blind," putting his eyes again to the hole,
first one, then the other.

"Come, won't you tell me how this came to be a miracle chapel?"

"Oh, ma'am,"--he turned his face from the fence, and clasped his hands
in excitement,--"it was a poor widow woman who come here with her baby
that was a-dying, and she prayed to the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin
Mary made the baby live--"

He dropped his voice, the words falling slower and slower. As he
raised his face, one could see then that he was blind, and the
accident that had happened to him, in fording the street. What
sightless eyes! What a wet, muddy little skeleton! Ten? No; hardly ten
years of age.

"The widow woman she picked up her baby, and she run down the walk
here, and out into the street screaming--she was so glad,"--putting
his eyes to the peep-hole again,--"and the Virgin Mary come down the
walk after her, and come through the gate, too; and that was all she
seed--the widow woman."

"Did you know the widow woman?"

He shook his head.

"How do you know it?"

"That was what they told me. And they told me, the birds all begun to
sing at once, and the flowers all lighted up like the sun was shining
on them. They seed her. And she come down the walk, and through the
gate," his voice lowering again to a whisper.

Aye, how the birds must have sung, and the flowers shone, to the
widowed mother as she ran, nay, leaped, down that rose-hedged walk,
with her restored baby clasped to her bo