A POOR widow who was all alone in the world earned her living by going out to wash and scrub, day after day. She left her room early in the morning, and did not return to it until night. Then she had but one living thing to keep her company, a pet robin. That it might catch a glimpse of the blue sky, from the narrow alley in which she lived, she used to hang it on a nail quite outside of her window, before she left. On her return she took it down and suspended it again near the head of her bed.

One evening on coming home she found the cage with its door open, and empty. After searching again and again, through every corner and cranny of her room, thinking her bird could not have left her, she was forced to admit it was gone.

Now, those who are surrounded with objects on which to bestow their affections, know not what a loss such an insignificant creature may be to one who has no other familiar thing to love. The poor woman missed her bird when she awoke in the morning, when she went out to her day’s work, and when she came back, tired and sad at heart, after her work was over. The cage still hung near her bed; she looked at it and grieved—yes, more than she ought to have done.

While it was thus with her she had, one night, a dream. She thought she was walking through a forest. The air was pure, the shade was cool and delightful, and every leaf around her looked fresh and green. She stood comparing the scene, in her thoughts, with the crowded alley in which she lived, when suddenly the silence was broken by a loud note far above her head. She looked up, and recognized her robin. It was leaping from bough to bough, and its song was not as it used to be, with a note[263]
[264] of sadness in it, but glad and full of joy—the song of the prisoner set free.

She awoke, rose up, took down the cage and put it in a closet out of sight, not forgetting its former inmate, but thinking of it as she had seen it, since its escape, in her dream.

“I am satisfied,” she said, “and would not call it back. Its prison door has been opened; I will wait patiently until mine is opened for me.”