on
(as some may think) for the lad that was I to utter, grown tall and
broad and lusty for my years; but how sufficient (I recall) to still
the fears of night! They who are grown lads, like the lad that was I,
got somewhat beyond the years of tenderness, cling within their hearts
to all the lost privileges of love they must by tradition affect to
despise. My prayer for the little lamb that was I presented no aspect
of incongruity to my uncle; it left him silent and solemnly
abstracted: the man being cast into a heavy muse upon its content, his
head fallen over his breast, as was his habit, and his great gray
brows drawn down. How still the night--how cold and clear: how
unfeeling in this frosty calm and silence, save, afar, where the
little stars winked their kindly cognizance of the wakeful dwellers
of the earth! I sat up in my bed, peering through the window, to catch
the first glint of the moon and to watch her rise dripping, as I used
to fancy, from the depths of the sea.

"But they stray!" my uncle complained.

'Twas an utterance most strange. "Uncle Nick," I asked, "what is it
that strays?"

"The feet o' children," he answered.

By this I was troubled.

"They stray," he repeated. "Ay; 'tis as though the Shepherd minded not
at all."

"Will my feet stray?"

He would not answer: and then all at once I was appalled--who had not
feared before.

"Tell me!" I demanded.

He reached out and touched my hand--a fleeting, diffident touch--and
gently answered, "Ay, lad; your feet will stray."

"No, no!" I cried.

"The feet of all children," said he. "'Tis the way o' the world. They
isn't mothers' prayers enough in all the world t' change the
Shepherd's will. He's wise--the Shepherd o' the lambs."

"'Tis sad, then," I expostulated, "that the Shepherd haves it so."

"Sad?"

"Ay--wondrous sad."

"I'm not able t' think 'tis sad," said he. "'Tis wise, Dannie, I'm
thinkin', t' have the lads wander in strange paths. I'd not have un
suffer fear an' sorrow, God knows! not one poor lad of all the lads
that ever was. I'd suffer for their sins meself an' leave un go scot
free. Not one but I'd be glad t' do it for. But still 'tis wise, I'm
thinkin', that they should wander an' learn for theirselves the
trouble o' false ways. I wisht," he added, simply, "that they was
another plan--some plan t' save un sorrow while yet it made un men.
But I can't think o' none."

"But an they're lost?"

He scratched his head in a r