Then he handed the lad a small, very small seed, and, leading him a short distance, bade him make a small hole in the ground and place the seed within it. He did so. And the old man bent over and kissed his fair brow as he smoothed the earth above the seed's resting-place, and told him that he must water it and watch it, and it would spring up and become a fair thing in his sight.
'Twas hard for the child to believe this; yet he did believe, for he knew that his friend was true.
Night came; and, as he lay on his little couch, the child dreamed of that seed, and he had a vision of the future which passed with the shades of the night.
Morning dawned, and he hastened to water and to watch the spot where the seed was planted.
It had not come up; yet he believed the good old man, and knew that it would.
All day long he was bending over it, or talking with his aged companion about the buried seed.
A few days passed, then a little sprout; burst from the ground; and the child clapped his hands, and shouted and danced.
Daily it grew fairer in the sight of the child, and rose higher and higher. And the old man led him once more to the spot, and told him that even so would the body of his little sister rise from the grave in which a short time before it hid been placed, and, rising higher and higher, it would never cease to ascend.
The old man wept; but the child, with his tiny white hand, brushed away his tears, and, with child-like simplicity, said that if his sister arose she would go to God, for God was above.
Then the mourner's heart was strengthened, and the lesson he would have taught the child came from the child to him, and made his soul glad.