Gottlieb went home and told his mother. And they both agreed, that if not an angel, the old man was as good as an angel, and was certainly a messenger of God.
To have been the master-builder of the Cathedral of which it was Magdalis's glory and pride that her husband had carved a few of the stones!
The master-builder of the Cathedral, yet finding his joy and glory in being a little child of God!
VI.
The "silent week" that followed was a solemn time to the mother and the boy.
Every day, whatever time could be spared from the practice with the choir, and from helping in the little house and with his mother's wood-carving, or from playing with Lenichen in the fields, Gottlieb spent in the silent Cathedral, draped as it was in funereal black for the Sacred Life given up to God for man.
"How glad," he thought again and again, "the little children of Jerusalem must have been that they sang when they could to the blessed Jesus! They little knew how soon the kind hands that blessed them would be stretched on the cross, and the kind voice that would not let their singing be stopped would be moaning 'I thirst.'"
But he felt that he, Gottlieb, ought to have known; and if ever he was allowed to sing his Hosannas in the choir again, it would feel like the face of the blessed Lord himself smiling on him, and His voice saying, "Suffer this little one to come unto Me. I have forgiven him."
He hoped also to see the master-builder again; but nevermore did the slight, aged form appear in the sunshine of the stained windows, or in the shadows of the arches he had planned.
And so the still Passion week wore on.