children.

It was given him.

At first the eager voice trembled for joy, in the verse he had to sing
alone, and the choir-master's brows were knitted with anxiety. But it
cleared and steadied in a moment, and soared with a fullness and
freedom none had ever heard in it before, filling the arches of the
cathedral and the hearts of all.

And the beautiful archduchess bent over to see the child, and her soft,
dark eyes were fixed on his face, as he sang, until they filled with
tears; and, afterward, she asked who the mother of that little angel
was.

But the child's eyes were fixed on nothing earthly, and his heart was
listening for another voice--the voice all who listen for shall surely
hear.

And it said in the heart of the child, that day: "Suffer the little one
to come unto me. Go in peace. Thy sins are forgiven."

A happy, sacred evening they spent that Easter in the hermit's cell,
the mother and the two children, the boy singing his best for the
little nest, as before for the King of kings.

Still, a little anxiety lingered in the mother's heart about the pomp
of the next day.

But she need not have feared.