THAT night Ruby has a curious dream. It is stilly night, and she is standing down by the creek, watching the dance and play of the water over the stones on its way to the river. All around her the moonlight is streaming, kissing the limpid water into silver, and in the deep blue of the sky the stars are twinkling like gems on the robe of the great King.

Not a sound can the little girl hear save the gentle murmur of the stream over the stones. All the world—the white, white, moon-radiant world—seems to be sleeping save Ruby; she alone is awake.

Stranger than all, though she is all alone, the child feels no sense of dread. She is content to stand there, watching the moon-kissed stream rushing by, her only companions those ever-watchful lights of heaven, the stars.

Faint music is sounding in her ears, music so faint and far away that it almost seems to come from the streets of the Golden City, where the redeemed sing the “new song” of the Lamb through an endless day. Ruby strains her ears to catch the notes echoing through the still night in faint far-off cadence.

Nearer, ever nearer, it comes; clearer, ever clearer, ring those glad strains of joy, till, with a great, glorious rush they seem to flood the whole world:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; good will toward men!”

“It’s on Jack’s card!” Ruby cannot help exclaiming; but the words die away upon her lips.

Gazing upwards, she sees such a blaze of glory as almost seems to blind her. Strangely enough the thought that this is only a dream, and the attendant necessity of pinching, do not occur to Ruby just now.

She is gazing upwards in awestruck wonder to the shining sky. What is this vision of fair faces, angel faces, hovering above her, faces shining with a light which “never was on land or sea,” the radiance from their snowy wings striking athwart the gloom?

And in great, glorious unison the grand old Christmas carol rings forth—

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; good will toward men!”

Open-eyed and awestruck, the little girl stands gazing upwards, a wonder fraught with strange beauty at her heart. Can it be possible that one of those bright-faced angels may be the mother whom Ruby never knew, sent from the far-off land to bear the Christmas message to the child who never missed a mother’s love because she never knew it?

“Oh, mamma,” cries poor Ruby, stretching appealing hands up to the shining throng, “take me with you! Take me with you back to heaven!”

She hardly knows why the words rise to her lips. Heaven has never been a very real place to this little girl, although her mother is there; the far-off city, with its pearly gates and golden streets, holds but a shadowy place in Ruby’s heart, and before to-night she has never greatly desired to enter therein.

The life of the present has claimed all her attention, and, amidst the joys and pleasures of to-day, the coming life has held but little place. But now, with heaven’s glories almost opened before her, with the “new song” of the blessed in her ears, with her own long-lost mother so near, Ruby would fain be gone.

Slowly the glory fades away, the angel faces grow dimmer and dimmer, the heavenly music dies into silence, and the world is calm and hushed as before. Still Ruby stands gazing upwards, longing for the angel visitants to come again. But no heavenly light illumines the sky, only the pale radiance of the moon, and no sound breaks upon the child’s listening ear save the monotonous music of the ever-flowing water.

With a disappointed little sigh, Ruby brings her gaze back to earth again. The white moonlight is flooding the country for miles around, and in its light the ringed trees in the cleared space about the station stand up gaunt and tall like watchful sentinels over this home in the lonely bush. Yet Ruby has no desire to retrace her steps homewards. It may be that the angel host with their wondrous song will come again. So the child lingers, throwing little pebbles in the brook, and watching the miniature circles widen and widen, brightened to limpid silver in the sheeny light.

A halting footstep makes her turn her head. There, a few paces away, a bent figure is coming wearifully along, weighted down beneath its bundle of faggots. Near Ruby it stumbles and falls, the faggots rolling from the wearied back down to the creek, where, caught by a boulder, they swing this way and that in the flowing water.

Involuntarily the child gives a step forward, then springs back with a sudden shiver. “It’s the wicked old one,” she whispers. “And I couldn’t help him! Oh, I couldn’t help him!”

“On earth peace, good will toward men!” Faint and far away is the echo, yet full of meaning to the child’s heart. She gives a backward glance over her shoulder at the fallen old man. He is groping with his hands this way and that, as though in darkness, and the blood is flowing from a cut in the ugly yellow wizened face.

“If it wasn’t him,” Ruby mutters. “If it was anybody else but the wicked old one; but I can’t be kind to him.”

“On earth peace, good will toward men!” Clearer and clearer rings out the angel benison, sent from the gates of heaven, where Ruby’s mother waits to welcome home again the husband and child from whose loving arms she was so soon called away. To be “kind,” that is what Ruby has decided “good will” means. Is she, then, being kind, to the old man whose groping hands appeal so vainly to her aid?

“Dad wouldn’t like me to,” decides Ruby, trying to stifle the voice of conscience. “And he’s such a horrid old man.”

Clearer and still clearer, higher and still higher rings out the angels’ singing. There is a queer sort of tugging going on at Ruby’s heart. She knows she ought to go back to help old Davis and yet she cannot—cannot!

Then a great flash of light comes before her eyes, and Ruby suddenly wakens to find herself in her own little bed, the white curtains drawn closely to ward off mosquitoes, and the morning sun slanting in and forming a long golden bar on the opposite curtain.

The little girl rubs her eyes and stares about her. She, who has so often even doubted reality, finds it hard to believe that what has passed is really a dream. Even yet the angel voices seem to be sounding in her ears, the heavenly light dazzling her eyes.

“And they weren’t angels, after all,” murmurs Ruby in a disappointed voice. “It was only a dream.”

Only a dream! How many of our so-called realities are “only a dream,” from which we waken with disappointed hearts and saddened eyes. One far day there will come to us that which is not a dream, but a reality, which can never pass away, and we shall awaken in heaven’s morning, being “satisfied.”

“Dad,” asks Ruby as they go about the station that morning, she hanging on her father’s arm, “what was my mamma like—my own mamma, I mean?”The big man smiles, and looks down into the eager little face uplifted to his own.

“Your own mamma, little woman,” he repeats gently. “Poor little girl! of course you don’t remember her. You remind me of her, Ruby, in a great many ways, and it is my greatest wish that you grow up just such a woman as your dear mother was. Why are you asking, little girlie? I don’t think you ever asked me about your mother before.”

“I just wondered,” says Ruby. She is gazing up into the cloudless blue of the sky, which has figured so vividly in her dream of last night. “I wish I remembered her,” Ruby murmurs, with the tiniest sigh.

“Poor little lassie!” says the father, patting the small hand. “Her greatest sorrow was in leaving you, Ruby. You were just a baby when she died. Not long before she went away she spoke about you, her little girl whom she was so unwilling to leave. ‘Tell my little Ruby,’ she said, ‘that I shall be waiting for her. I have prayed to the dear Lord Jesus that she may be one of those whom He gathers that day when He comes to make up His jewels.’ She used to call you her little jewel, Ruby.”

“And my name means a jewel,” says Ruby, looking up into her father’s face with big, wondering brown eyes. The dream mother has come nearer to her little girl during those last few minutes than she has ever done before. Those words, spoken so long ago, have made Ruby feel her long-dead young mother to be a real personality, albeit separated from the little girl for whom one far day she had prayed that Christ might number her among His jewels. In that fair city, “into which no foe can enter, and from which no friend can ever pass away,” Ruby’s mother has done with all care and sorrow. God Himself has wiped away all tears from her eyes for ever.

Ruby goes about with a very sober little face that morning. She gathers fresh flowers for the sitting-room, and carries the flower-glasses across the courtyard to the kitchen to wash them out. This is one of Ruby’s customary little duties. She has a variety of such small tasks which fill up the early hours of the morning. After this Ruby usually conscientiously learns a few lessons, which her step-mother hears her recite now and then, as the humour seizes her.

But at present Ruby is enjoying holidays in honour of Christmas, holidays which the little girl has decided shall last a month or more, if she can possibly manage it.

“You’re very quiet to-day, Ruby,” observes her step-mother, as the child goes about the room, placing the vases of flowers in their accustomed places. Mrs. Thorne is reclining upon her favourite sofa, the latest new book which the station affords in her hand. “Aren’t you well, child?” she asks.

“Am I quiet?” Ruby says. “I didn’t notice, mamma. I’m all right.”

It is true, as the little girl has said, that she has not even noticed that she is more quiet than usual. Involuntarily her thoughts have gone out to the mother whom she never knew, the mother who even now is waiting in sunny Paradise for the little daughter she has left behind. Since she left her so long ago, Ruby has hardly given a thought to her mother. The snow is lying thick on her grave in the little Scottish kirkyard at home; but Ruby has been happy enough without her, living her own glad young life without fear of death, and with no thought to spare for the heaven beyond.

But now the radiant vision of last night’s dream, combined with her father’s words, have set the child thinking. Will the Lord Jesus indeed answer her mother’s prayer, and one day gather little Ruby among His jewels? Will he care very much that this little jewel of His has never tried very hard throughout her short life to work His will or do His bidding? What if, when the Lord Jesus comes, He finds Ruby all unworthy to be numbered amongst those jewels of His? And the long-lost mother, who even in heaven will be the gladder that her little daughter is with her there, how will she bear to know that the prayer she prayed so long ago is all in vain?

“And if he doesn’t gather me,” Ruby murmurs, staring straight up into the clear, blue sky, “what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”