"He must have got all the way home," he thought.
When the Poor Man reached his native village things looked different. Houses that he remembered had disappeared and others had taken their places. He couldn't find his own little house at all. He asked the people he met and they knew nothing about it. And they knew nothing about him, either, not even his name. And nobody even knew about his sons. At last he did meet one old man who remembered the family name and who told him that many years before the last of the sons had gone to another village to live.
"There's no place here for me," the Poor Man thought. "I better go back to my friend the Beggar and stay with him. No one else wants me."
So once again he followed the silver tracks all that long way over all those bridges and when at last he reached the garden gate he was very tired, for he was old and feeble now. It was all he could do to give one faint little knock. But the Beggar heard him and came running to let him in. And when he saw him, how tired he was and how feeble, he put his arm around him and helped him into the Garden and he said:
"You shall stay with me now forever and we shall be very happy together."
And the Poor Man when he looked in the Beggar's face to thank him saw that he was not a beggar at all but the Blessed Christ Himself. And then he knew that he was in the Garden of Paradise.
THE END