tle while ago,"
said he, mustering up courage, with an
effort, to speak to this wondrous mass
of knight-errantry; "at all events the
Diamond-drop, of which I know you are
the fragments, told me you were going
to some Palace in the sky. Where is
that?"

"It is our _Home_, soaring warbler,"
said the million million little voices,
their spears and helmets flashing brightly
in the radiance, their horses prancing
and pawing the path of light--"It
is Home, Home, Home!" said the
myriads, the very air tremulous with
the shout.

"Yes, but where is that?" repeated
the Lark, determined to come to the
point, and not to be numerically extinguished,
as he darted like lightning
round and round the brilliant host.

"The Sun! the Sun!" one after
another made answer. The Dewdrop
was a tear that fell from the sky because
the Sun was gone. But, as you
have just told us, we are all parts of it--everyone
of us are; and we are on our
way again to the golden entrance to his
Palace.

The army of misty globules rose
and rose, higher and yet higher. They
seemed, too, to get brighter and brighter
in the ascent, the Lark rising with them,
indeed till his little wings were tired.
Then when he felt that he could act as
convoy no farther, down he came at
one long unpausing dart to the furrow
adjoining the wooded dell below, which
was now all streaked with fleckered
light. He thought (and we shall not
quarrel with the fancy) that these
patches of light were nothing else than
the golden arrows he had seen shot from
the bow of the Cherubs--the little
Angels of the Dawn--and that they
were now lying thick in the green
arcade. He just took breath, after the
exhaustion and excitement, alike of
both body and mind, which his aerial
adventure had entailed; and then
hastened straight to the home of the
Nightingale and Thrush, to tell of the
glorious ascent (what the old and learned
creatures of the earth would have called
the apotheosis) of the Dewdrop on
the rose-leaf; its severance into a
million fragments; and how these,
in the shape of a great army, had
marched right within

THE SUN'S GOLDEN GATES!

[Illustration]

_AFTERWORDS._

_An Angel's Whisper._

The Soul--the Spirit of Man--apart
from the Great Sun,
becomes a teardrop. All is
dark to it, when that All-glorious Source
of Light and Love is away. Earth's
sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But
when the morning comes, and the
Sun returns, the teardrop becomes