39/70 Then his fingers felt a thread; he seized it, and it guided him through the darkness. The land grew brighter and brighter; the thread brought him into his sunny native valley, to the place with the old gabled houses, to his father's house which stood amidst the fruit-trees, and the thread to which his fingers still clung involuntarily led him into the room where it had been spun from his mother's distaff. And there she sat and span the thread, with her pale face and soft wrinkles and kind eyes, and directly the boy stood near her she told him tales of the Saviour. He listened to her and was a happy child. |