firewood: "Here, at least, no one will be able to discover me — the darkness is complete."

He squatted down and huddled into himself and could not draw a breath. So afraid was he.

And suddenly he felt at ease. The pain in his hands and feet ceased, and he felt a warmth as though he were beside a stove. For a moment he imagined he heard his mother's voice singing him a little song as she bent tenderly over him.

— Mama, I'm sleeping. How sweet it is to sleep here, Mama.

And suddenly a tender voice sounded above him: "Come, my dear little one, and look at my tree." He said to himself: "That is my mother's voice." But no... it was not his mother. Who, then, had called him so? He saw no one. Yet someone bent over him in the darkness and clasped him to his breast. And "He" stretched out His arms to him. And suddenly the whole universe was flooded with a great light! My God! What light!

And he saw a tree. Oh! It is the

splendid Christmas tree. But it is not of pine. He had never seen a tree like it before. Where, then, is he now? Everything gleams and glows, and everywhere around him are little dolls. But no — they are not dolls. They are little girls and little boys, all of them playing. They dance the dabke and fly. Then they embrace him and take him by the hand. And he flies to them. And here is what he sees: he sees his mother looking at him with joy, and smiling.

Mama, Mama! Ah! How sweet life is here, Mama!

And the little ones embrace him again. And he longs to tell them all about the dolls he had seen in the window.

And he asked them fondly: "Who are you, little boys, and who might you be, you sweet little girls?" They said to him: "This is the Christmas tree that the Lord Christ sets up on Christmas night for the little ones who had no Christmas tree on earth."

And so he learned that all these children had been like him. Some of them had died of cold

in baskets left on the steps of the palaces of Petersburg. Some had perished in the hands of wet-nurses. And some had departed this life at their mothers' breasts, whose milk had run dry in the days of the famine of the city of Samara. And they had all gathered here now, like angels, as guests of the Lord Christ; and He was among them, raising His hand to bless them and to bless their mothers.

And the mothers are here too, standing in a corner and shedding tears. Each of them recognizes her child, who flies to meet her. And the children embrace their mothers and wipe away their tears and beg them to weep no more, since they are happy...

And in the morning, the doormen found there the body of a little child who had run into the courtyard of the house and frozen behind a pile of firewood. They found his mother too. She had departed this life a little before her child.

And the two met in the kingdom of the merciful God.