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Late one afternoon the minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Landler, came by invitation to take supper with Mrs. and Miss Stratton. After a while, as they sat, pleasantly chatting, Mr. Landler spoke of a ship that had been overdue for almost two weeks. A neighbor’s son was on board, and this fact caused Mr. and Mrs. Landler to look at the papers, morning and night, as soon as possible, to ascertain if anything had been heard of the missing vessel.

“That’s what my daughter and I have been doing, too,” returned Mrs. Stratton. “I wonder if this evening’s paper hasn’t come, so we could look?”

Her daughter glanced at the clock.

“Why, yes!” said she. “That paper ought to have come before now.”

Miss Stratton went out and hunted carefully. No paper was visible, search as she might.

“Perhaps it hasn’t come yet,” she said to the guests, when she came in.

A little later she went out again. Mrs. Landler came to help search, though Miss Stratton disclaimed the need of aid.

“The paper doesn’t always fall where I can see it,” explained Miss Stratton, mortified at her failure to find the paper for her guests.

“Who brings it around?” asked Mrs. Landler, looking at the broad front walk.

“Harry Butterworth,” answered Miss Stratton.

She did not tell of the annoyance Harry had caused her heretofore. Harry’s mother was a church friend of the Landlers and the Strattons, and Miss Stratton was loath to expose the boy’s shortcomings.

No paper appeared, and after a thorough search, Mrs. Landler and Miss Stratton went into the house. Dusk was coming. Miss Stratton had occasion to go upstairs for something, and glancing out of the front hall window, she saw the twisted roll of that evening’s paper lying on a projection of the roof.

“He threw the paper on the roof!” exclaimed Miss Stratton, “and he didn’t come in to tell me!”

She pushed up the hall window, and reaching out as far as she dared, she tried with an old umbrella handle to dislodge the paper. She drew breathlessly back.

“It’s no use! I can’t get it!” she gasped.

She went downstairs and told her mother quietly, but Mrs. Stratton had no scruples about informing her guests what had happened.

“That boy’s thrown this evening’s paper on the roof!” stated old Mrs. Stratton. “He does put us to so much trouble!”

The minister instantly offered to climb the roof. Miss Stratton and her mother protested, but Mr. Landler took off his coat, climbed out of an upper-story window, and secured the paper. In one column was a notice that the missing ship had been heard from and was safe. Great was the rejoicing around the Strattons’ supper-table that their friend’s son was not lost.

The next time Mr. Landler saw Harry, the minister said pleasantly, “You gave me quite a climb the other night, my boy.”

Harry looked astonished.

“Gave you a climb?” he questioned. “I gave you one?”

“Yes,” nodded Mr. Landler. “Miss Stratton’s evening paper fell on her roof. My wife and I were taking supper there, so I climbed the roof for the paper.”

Harry turned very red. Was ever a paper boy so unfortunate? He knew the paper fell on the roof, but who would have supposed Mr. Landler was at the Strattons’? Harry wanted very much to be thought well of by the minister and his wife. Everybody liked them.

“I didn’t know you were there,” apologized Harry, hardly knowing what to say.

“No,” said the minister, gently, “we never know who may be in any home. You didn’t know you were delivering the paper to me. You thought it was to Miss Stratton. Wasn’t that it?”

“Yes,” acknowledged the boy.

“If the Lord Jesus were here on earth, Harry,” went on the minister in a very grave, tender tone, “and if he wanted a little service from you, you wouldn’t render it in the way you deliver Miss Stratton’s paper, would you? Yet she is his child, one of his representatives on earth, and as you treat her you treat him. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these,’ you know, Harry.”

The next night Miss Stratton’s paper fell with an emphatic thwack in the middle of the front walk. The next night it did the same, and the next, and the next.

“What has changed that boy?” wondered Miss Stratton with grateful relief, as weeks passed and the paper still fell in plain sight.

She did not know that as Harry carefully aimed his papers, the boy thought, “‘Ye have done it unto me.'”