The Master Thief

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So Father Lawrence fell down on his knees before the angel and thanked him, and the following Sunday he preached a farewell sermon, and gave out that an angel had come down into the large maple tree in his garden, and had announced to him that, because of his righteousness, he should be taken up alive into heaven, and as he thus preached and told them this everyone in the church, old or young, wept.

On Monday night the Master Thief once more came as an angel, and before the Priest was put into the sack he fell on his knees and thanked him; but no sooner was the Priest safely inside it than the Master Thief began to drag him away over stocks and stones.

`Oh! oh! `cried the Priest in the sack. `Where are you taking me?'

`This is the way to heaven. The way to heaven is not an easy one,' said the Master Thief, and dragged him along till he all but killed him.

At last he flung him into the Governor's goose-house, and the geese began to hiss and peck at him, till he felt more dead than alive.

`Oh! oh! oh! Where am I now?' asked the Priest.

`Now you are in Purgatory,' said the Master Thief, and off he went and took the gold and the silver and all the precious things which the Priest had laid together in his best parlour.

Next morning, when the goose-girl came to let out the geese, she heard the Priest bemoaning himself as he lay in the sack in the goose-house.

`Oh, heavens! who is that, and what ails you?' said she.

`Oh,' said the Priest, `if you are an angel from heaven do let me out and let me go back to earth again, for no place was ever so bad as this--the little fiends nip me so with their tongs.'

`I am no angel,' said the girl, and helped the Priest out of the sack. `I only look after the Governor's geese, that's what I do, and they are the little fiends which have pinched your reverence.'

`This is the Master Thief's doing! Oh, my gold and my silver and my best clothes!' shrieked the Priest, and, wild with rage, he ran home so fast that the goose-girl thought he had suddenly gone mad.