The Apricot Tree

"He might just have thanked me," thought Ned to himself; but he forbore to tell Tom so.

Ned always read a chapter in the Bible to his grandmother every night when he came home from work. It happened that this evening the chapter fixed on was the twelfth of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. He was much struck by one of the verses in it: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."

"Grandmother," said Ned, when he had concluded the chapter, "I understand the first part of this verse very well, it is plain enough; but what is meant by the words, 'for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head?'"

His grandmother replied, that this passage had once puzzled her; but that an o