She hastened on, but when she reached the place where the fagots were she saw an old woman already there, gathering up the fallen wood. The old woman was so bent and poor and miserable-looking that the little girl’s heart ached for her.
“Oh, oh!” groaned the old woman. “How my poor bones do ache. If I had but a shawl to wrap about my shoulders I would not suffer so.”
The child thought of her own grandmother, and of how she sometimes suffered, and she had pity on the old woman.
“Here,” said she, “take my shawl”; and slipping it from her shoulders she gave it to the old woman.
And now she stood there in the forest with her arms and shoulders bare, and with nothing on her but her little shift. The sharp wind blew about her, but she was not cold. She had eaten nothing, but she was not hungry. She was fed and warmed by her own kindness.
She gathered her fagots and started home again. It was growing dusk, and the stars shown through the bare branches of the trees. Suddenly an old man stood beside her. “Give me of your fagots,” said he, “for my hearth is cold, and I am too old to gather wood for myself.”
The little girl sighed. If she gave him the fagots she would have to stop to gather more. Still she would not refuse him. “Take them,” she said, “in heaven’s name.”
No sooner had she said this than she saw it was not an old man who stood before her, but a shining angel.
“You have fed the hungry,” said the angel, “you have clothed the naked, and you have given help to those who asked it. You shall not go unrewarded. See!”
At once a light shone around the child, and it seemed to her that all the stars of heaven were falling through the bare branches of the trees, but these stars were diamonds and rubies and other precious stones. They lay thick upon the ground. “Gather them together,” said the angel, “for they are yours.”