Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/159



T is hard to tell this little story,—it is so simple. When I was a youth, I used to gather the children of our street on Sunday mornings during the spring and summer seasons and take them with me to the fields and woods. I took great pleasure in the friendship of these little people, who were as gay as birds.

The children were only too glad to leave the dusty, narrow streets of the city. Their mothers provided them with slices of bread, while I bought them dainties and filled a big bottle with cider, and like a shepherd, walked behind my carefree little lambs, while we passed through the town and the fields on our way to the green forest, beautiful and caressing in its array of Spring.

We always started on our journey early in