All the morning the child ran about his field, smelling the sweet, tasting the sweet, plucking the bright and gay; and as he plucked and smelled and tasted, he found among the strawberries a dusky leaf that was bitter in his mouth. "What is this?" he asked of the Angel beside him; and the Angel said, "It is wormwood!"

   "Pluck it all up!" cried the child. "It is bitter and hateful; I will have nought in my field but strawberries and roses."

   And the Angel smiled, with folded hands.

   Noon came, and afternoon, with long rays sloping westward; and the child walked in his field with slow and thoughtful steps. There were no flowers now in the grass, but everywhere a dusky leaf with

   dusky berries; and the air was full of the fragrance of them, sweet and yet bitter; bitter, yet oh, how sweet!

   "What is this," the child asked, "that is bitter, and yet sweeter than aught else in the world?"

   And the Angel said, "It is wormwood!"

   "

    Though I make my bed in Hell

   ...."

   It was dark in the Pit. The air was heavy with poisonous vapors; the walls were foul with the slime of uncounted generations; under foot was the horror of the ages; yet still the man slept, for he was used to the place, and his brain sodden with the fumes of it. But by and by, as he slept, a sound crept into his ears, a weary, crying voice that went on and on and would not still; till the man stirred uneasily in his sleep, and awoke with the sound in his ears.

   "Who is this," he said, "that breaks my slumber?"

   He hearkened, and the voice went crying on:

   "Oh! the blackness and the horror! oh! the dreadful, dreadful place! will none help me out?"

   "What ails you at the place?" asked the man. "One sleeps well enough, if folk would but be quiet."

   And the voice went clamoring on; the piteousness of it might have stirred the dead things under foot.

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