knocked, and asked if she could have a nights lodging. The woman
who opened to her went and asked the farmer. Now the old man did not
like hospitality, and in particular to such as stood most in need of
it; he did not enjoy throwing away money! At the same time, however,
he was very fond of hearing all the country rumours; and he thought
with himself he would buy her news with a scrap of what was going,
and a shake-down at the foot of the wall. So he told his servant to
bring her in.

"He received her not unkindly, for he wanted her to talk; and he let
her have a share of the supper, such as it was. But not until he had
asked every question about everybody he could think of, and drawn
her own history from her as well, would he allow her to have the
rest she so much needed.

"Now it was a poor house, like most in the country, and nearly
without partitions. The old man had his warm box-bed, and slept on
feathers where no draught could reach him, and the poor woman had
her bed of short rumpled straw on the earthen floor at the foot of
the wall in the coldest corner. Yet the heart of the man had been
moved by her story, for, without dwelling on her sufferings, she had
been honest in telling it. He had indeed, ere he went to sleep,
thanked God that he was so much better off than she. For if he did
not think it the duty of the rich man to share with his neighbours,
he at least thought it his duty to thank God for his being richer
than they.

"Now it may well seem strange that such a man should be privileged
to see a vision; but we do read in the Bible of a prophet who did
not even know his duty to an ass, so that the ass had to teach it