St. Joseph far away from cruel Herod into Egypt and how the noise of the
rattling seeds nearly betrayed their flight and how the plant was cursed
for evermore and made as hungry as a wolf. And the story of how the
robin tried to loosen one of the cruel nails so that the blood from the
poor Saviour drenched his breast and stained it red for evermore, and of
that other bird, the crossbill, who pecked at the nails until his beak
became crossed. He could listen for ever to the tale of St. Cuthbert who
was fed by ravens, of St. Martin who cut off his cloak and gave it to a
beggar, of St. Anthony who preached to the fishes, of St. Raymond who
put up his cowl and floated from Spain to Africa like a nautilus, of St.
Nicolas who raised three boys from the dead after they had been killed
and cut up and salted in a tub by a cruel man that wanted to eat them,
and of that strange insect called a Praying Mantis which alighted upon
St. Francis' sleeve and sang the _Nunc Dimittis_ before it flew away.

These were all stories that made bedtime sweet, stories to remember and
brood upon gratefully in the darkness of the night when he lay awake and
when, alas, other stories less pleasant to recall would obtrude
themselves.

Mark was not brought up luxuriously in the Lima Street Mission House,
and the scarcity of toys stimulated his imagination. All his toys were
old and broken, because he was only allowed to have the toys left over
at the annual Christmas Tree in the Mission Hall; and since even the
best of toys on that tree were the cast-offs of rich little children
whose parents performed a vicarious act of charity in presenting them to
the poor, it may be understood that Mark's share of these was not
calculated to spoil him. His most conspicuous toy was a box of mutilated
grenadiers, whose stands had been melted by their former owner in the
first rapture of discovering that lead melts in fire and who in