mound in the field, a little procession passing along the
highway. Those in front carried something on their shoulders which
must be heavy, for it took six of them to carry it. He knew it was a
coffin, for his home was by the churchyard, and a funeral was no
unfamiliar sight. Behind it one man walked alone. For a moment Clare
watched him, and saw his bowed head and heavy pace. His heart filled
from its own perennial fount of pity, which was God himself in him. He
ran down the hill and across the next field, making for a spot some
distance ahead of the procession. As it passed him, he joined the
chief mourner, who went plodding on with his arms hanging by his
sides. Creeping close up to him, he slid his little soft hand into the
great horny hand of the peasant. Instinctively the big hand closed
upon the small one, and the weather-beaten face of a man of fifty
looked down on the boy. Not a word was said between them. They walked
on, hand in hand.

Neither had ever seen the other. The man was following his wife and
his one child to the grave. "Nothing almost sees miracles but misery,"
says Kent in _King Lear_. Because this man was miserable, he saw a
miracle where was no miracle, only something very good. The thing was
true and precious, yea, a message from heaven. Those deep, upturned,
silent eyes; the profound, divine sympathy that shone in them; the
grasp of the tiny hand upon his large fingers, made the heart of the
man, who happened to be a catholic, imagine, and for a few moments
believe, that he held the hand of the infant Saviour. The cloud lifted
from his heart and brain, and did not return when he came to
understand that this was not _the_ lamb of God, only another lamb from
the same fold.

When they had walked about two miles, the boy began to fear he might