en palm.

"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said
the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
temple that is called, Beautiful.

"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in
John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.

He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
his heart as with a great hand.

"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his
throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.

Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
know what further thing to say to him.

Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly,
"when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a
mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone,
with a tear freezing on his cheek.

"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged
doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
Walter Westmoreland."

I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth,
a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a
rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.

There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
same time I did.

"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was
my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Bec