e nearest town," the
angel said, "and there, in the public square, you will find a
mountebank (a clown) making the people laugh for money. He is the man
you seek, his soul has grown to the selfsame stature as your own; his
treasure on the celestial shore is neither less than yours nor more."

When the angel had faded from sight, the hermit bowed his head again,
but this time with great sorrow and fear. Had his forty years of
prayer been a terrible mistake, and was his soul indeed like a clown,
fooling in the market-place? He knew not what to think. Almost he
hoped he should not find the man, and could believe that he had dreamed
the angel vision. But when he came, after a long, toilful walk, to the
village, and the square, alas! there was the clown, doing his silly
tricks for the crowd.

The hermit stood and looked at him with terror and sadness, for he felt
that he was looking at his own soul. The face he saw was thin and
tired, and though it kept a smile or a grin for the people, it seemed
very sad to the hermit. Soon the man felt the hermit's eyes; he could
not go on with his tricks. And when he had stopped and the crowd had
left, the hermit went and drew the man aside to a place where they
could rest; for he wanted more than anything else on earth to know what
the man's soul was like, because what it was, his was.

So, after a little, he asked the clown, very gently, what his life was,
what it had been. And the clown answered, very sadly, that it was just
as it looked,--a life of foolish tricks, for that was the only way of
earning his bread that he knew.

"But have you never been anything different?" asked the hermit,
painfully.

The clown's head sank in his hands. "Yes, holy father," he said, "I
have been something else. I was a thief! I once belonged to the
wickedest band of mountain robbers that ever tormented the land, and I
was as wicked as the worst."

Alas! The hermit felt that his heart was breaking. Was this how he
looked to the Heavenly Father,--like a thief, a cruel mountain robber?
He could hardly speak, and the tears streamed from his old eyes, but he
gathered strength to ask one more question. "I beg you," he said, "if
you have ever done a single good deed in your life, remember it now,
and tell it to me;" for he thought that even one good deed would save
him from utter despair.

"Yes, one," the clown said, "but it was so small, it is not worth
telling; my life has been worthless