"Well," she began, "as I have told you before, Jesus always manifested an interest in me, by mentioning my virtues and indulging me in so many ways. However, naughty as I was, he was still my friend and called me Mary. Many a time, when I was a little tot, I have cried myself to sleep with both arms around his neck.

"How well I remember one evening when I had become so big that he could not fondle me any more, how he stood between me and prison, and how severely he admonished me when it was all over. It was while I was living in Nazareth that one dark night I headed a group of dare-devil maids to steal grapes from the garden of old Benjamin, the potter. Well, we got caught, and when I found that, not only myself, but I had gotten all the others into a scrape, I run over to Ruth with my troubles, as I always did, and she got Jesus to go right down and see old Ben and then she listened behind the screen and heard Jesus say something like this: 'Terror to the neighborhood, Benjamin; why, you talk like a wooden man. Magdalene is not yet in her teens, and you ought not to call it stealing for maids of that age to help themselves to a little fruit when they are hungry.' In that way he hammered at the crusty old miser until he gave in. Then, after Ruth had told me all about it, Jesus got us girls together and oh, the picture he did paint about thieves, which set us all to crying but me, and when I laughed he said something about there being oceans of room for improvement in me yet.

"Then, after the girls had gone home, wondering at their lucky escape, he and Ruth took me home, and while we stood in the moonlight by our old gate, Ruth told him all, how she had overheard him convincing old Ben that it was nothing, and had told me all about it, which made me laugh when he made it out so awful to us.

"Before leaving me, he, taking my hand in his, with his other arm around Ruth, talked to us about being true, and showed us that the course he had taken in my behalf was just the course God was taking with all those he loved and that God's power was so great that one was always safe in his keeping, not only in this life, but even in death, one would come out victorious, if they trusted in him.

"Of course, I cried half the night and resolved never to steal another grape, but in a few days I left Nazareth and soon became the ever irritable night-mare of the over-solemn saints around Capernaum, and then it was that Peter gave me the nickname of 'Tornado Mag of Galilee.'"

Here Magdalene paused and listened with that vacant gaze which betokened that while her body was in Bethany her soul had joined the wanderers in the dark. "I love Jesus," she murmured, "but, oh, my soul is tossing about like an empty shell on an ocean wave. Oh, that I could see more clearly through the misty veil of horror which hangs like a pall over the once beautiful city of Zion. I love Jesus, as the son of man, but I love him more as the Son of God. My womanly weakness yearns for him to return to our home in Galilee, while my inmost soul joins the song of the distant angels' choir. Oh, God, Thy will be done." Then stern old Joseph lowered her head to a pillow in the shadows of the mountain, while the heavenly host beamed down in silence on the swooning form of the heroic maid of Galilee.