Josserande's feet and licked her knees, uttering doleful moans. But the
people, who had come thither for entertainment, were not well pleased
with what had happened. There was now abundance of light, as men with
torches had arrived from the abbey in search of Gildas the Wise, whose
cell had been found empty at the hour of Compline.

The glare from the torches shone upon two hideous wounds made by the
wolf, who had devoured Matheline's beauty and Pol's strength,--that is
to say, the face of the one and the arms of the other--flesh and bones.
It was frightful to behold. The women wept while looking at the
repulsive, bleeding mass which had been Matheline's smiling face; the
men sought in the double bloody gaps some traces of Pol's arms, for the
powerful muscles, the glory of the athletic games; and every heart was
filled with wrath.

And the legend says that the tenant of Coat-Dor, Matheline's poor
father, knelt beside his daughter and felt around in the blood for the
scattered pearls, which were now as red as holly-berries.

"Alas!" said he, "of these dead, stained things, which when living were
so beautiful, which were admired and envied and loved, I was so proud
and happy."

Alas! indeed, alas! Perhaps it was not the girl's fault that her heart
was no larger than a little bird's; and yet for this defect was not
Matheline cruelly punished?

"Death to the wolf! death to the wolf! death to the wolf!"

From all sides was this cry heard, and brandishing pitchforks, cudgels,
ploughshares, and mallets, came rushing the people towards the wolf, who
still lay panting, with open jaws and pendent tongue, at the feet of
Dame Josserande.

Around them the torch-bearers formed a circle: not to throw light upon
the wolf and Dame Josserande, but to render homage to the white-haired
beggar, in whom, as though the scales had suddenly fallen from their
eyes, every one recognized the Grand Abbot of Ruiz, Gildas the Wise.

The grand abbot raised his hand, and the armed crowd's eager advance was
checked, as if their feet had been nailed to the ground. Calmly he
surveyed them, blessed them, and said,--

"Christians, the wolf did wrong to punish, for chastisement belongs to
God alone; therefore the wolf's fault should not be punished by you. In
whom resides the power of God? In the holy authority of fathers and
mothers. So here is my penitent Josserande, who will rightfully judge
the wolf and punish him; she is his mother."

When Gildas the Wise ceased speaking, you could have heard a mouse run
across the heath. Each one thought to himself: "So the wolf is really
Sylvestre Ker." But not a word was uttered, and all looked at Dame
Josserande's axe, which glistened in the moonlight.

Josserande's heart sank within her, and she murmured,--

"My beloved one, my beloved one, whom I have borne in my arms and
nourished with my milk,--ah! me, can the Lord God inflict this cruel
martyrdom upon me?"

No one replied, not even Gildas the Wise, who silently adjured the
All-Powerful, and recalled to Him the sacrifice of Abraham.

Josserande raised her axe, but she had the misfortune to look at the
wolf, who fixed his eyes, full of tears, upon her, and the axe fell from
her hands.

It was the wolf who picked it up, and when he gave it back to her, he
said,--

"I weep for you, my mother."

"Strike!" cried the crowd; for what remained of Pol and Matheline
uttered terrible groans. "Strike! strike!"

While Josserande again seized her axe, the grand abbot had time to
say,--

"Do not complain, you two unhappy ones; for your suffering here below
changes your hell into heaven."

Three times Josserande raised the axe, three times she let it fall
without striking; but at last she said, in a hoarse tone that sounded
like a death-rattle, "I have great faith in the good God!" and then she
struck boldly, for the wolf's head split in two halves.

XIII.

A sudden wind extinguished the torches, and some one prevented Dame
Josserande from falling, as she sank fainting to the ground, by
supporting her in his arms.

By the light of the halo which shone around the blessed head of Gildas
the Wise, the good people saw that this somebody was the young tenant,
Sylvestre Ker, no longer lame and one-eyed, but with two straight legs
and two perfect eyes.

At the same time there were heard voices in the clouds chanting. And
why? Because heaven and earth quivered with emotion at witnessing this
supreme act of faith soaring from the depth of anguish in a mother's
heart.

XIV.

This is the legend that for many centuries has been related at
Christmas-time on the shores of the Petite-Mer, which, in the Breton
tongue, is called Armor bihan, the Celtic name of Brittany.

If you ask what moral these good people draw from this strange story, I
will answer that it contains a basketful. Pol and Matheline, condemned
to walk around the Basin of the Pagans until the end of time,--one
without arms, the other without a face,--offer a severe lesson to those
who are too proud of their broad shoulders and brute force, and
gossiping flirts of girls with smiling faces and wicked hearts; the case
of Sylvestre Ker teaches young men not to listen to the demon of money;
the blow of Josserande's axe shows the miraculous power of faith.

Still further, that you may bind together these diverse morals in one,
here is a proverb which is current in the province: "Never stoop to
pick up the pearls of a smile." After this, ask me no more.

As to the authenticity of the story, I have already said that the
chestnut-grove belongs to the mayor's nephew, which is one guarantee;
and I will add that the spot is called Sylvestre-ker, and that the ruins
hung with moss have no other name than "The Wolf Tower."

    _An Indian Officer's Idyll._

    "An officer and a gentleman--which
    is an enviable thing."

    _Kipling._

THE PEACE EGG.

I.

Every one ought to be happy at Christmas. But there are many things
which ought to be, and yet are not; and people are sometimes sad even in
the Christmas holidays.

The Captain and his wife were sad, though it was Christmas Eve. Sad,
though they were in the prime of life, blessed with good health, devoted
to each other and to their children, with competent means, a comfortable
house on a little freehold property of their own, and, one might say,
everything that heart could desire. Sad, though they were good people,
whose peace of mind had a firmer foundation than their earthly goods
alone; contented people, too, with plenty of occupation for mind and
body. Sad--and in the nursery this was held to be past all
reason--though the children were performing that ancient and most
entertaining play or Christmas Mystery of Good St. George of England,
known as "The Peace Egg," for their benefit and behoof alone.

The play was none the worse that most of the actors were too young to
learn parts, so that there was very little of the rather tedious
dialogue, only plenty of dress and ribbons, and of fighting with wooden
swords. But though St. George looked bonny enough to warm any father's
heart, as he marched up and down with an air learned by watching many a
parade in barrack-square and drill-ground, and though the Valiant
Slasher did not cry in spite of falling hard and the Doctor treading
accidentally on his little finger in picking him up, still the Captain
and his wife sighed nearly as often as they smiled, and the mother
dropped tears as well as pennies into the cap which the King of Egypt
brought round after the performance.

II.

Many, many years back the Captain's wife had been a child herself, and
had laughed to see the village mummers act "The Peace Egg," and had been
quite happy on Christmas Eve. Happy, though she had no mother. Happy,
though her father was a stern man, very fond of his only child, but with
an obstinate will that not even she dared thwart. She had lived to
thwart it, and he had never forgiven her. It was when she married the
Captain. The old man had a prejudice against soldiers, which was quite
reason enough, in his opinion, for his daughter to sacrifice the
happiness of her future life by giving up the soldier she loved. At last
he gave her her choice between the Captain and his own favor and money.
She chose the Captain, and was disowned and disinherited.

The Captain bore a high character, and was a good and clever officer,
but that went for nothing against the old man's whim. He made a very
good husband, too; but even this did not move his father-in-law, who had
never held any intercourse with him or his wife since the day of their
marriage, and who had never seen his own grandchildren. Though not so
bitterly prejudiced as the old father, the Captain's wife's friends had
their doubts about the marriage. The place was not a military station,
and they were quiet country folk who knew very little about soldiers,
while what they imagined was not altogether favorable to "red-coats," as
they called them.

Soldiers are well-looking generally, it is true, and the Captain was
more than well-looking--he was handsome; brave, of course it is their
business, and the Captain had V. C. after his name and several bits of
ribbon on his patrol jacket. But then, thought the good people, they are
here to-day and gone to-morrow, you "never know where you have them;"
they are probably in debt, possibly married to several women in several
foreign countries, and, though they are very courteous in society, who
knows how they treat their wives when they drag them off from their
natural friends and protectors to distant lands, where no one can call
them to account?

"Ah, poor thing!" said Mrs. John Bull, junior, as she took off her
husband's coat on his return from business, a week after the Captain's
wedding, "I wonder how she feels? There's no doubt the old man behaved
disgracefully; but it's a great risk marrying a soldier. It stands to
reason, military men aren't domestic; and I wish--Lucy Jane, fetch your
papa's slippers, quick!--she'd had the sense to settle down comfortably
among her friends with a man who would have taken care of her."

"Officers are a wild set, I expect," said Mr. Bull, complacently, as he
stretched his limbs in his own particular arm-chair, into which no
member of his family ever intruded. "But the red-coats carry the day
with plenty of girls who ought to know better. You women are always
caught by a bit of finery. However, there's no use our bothering our
heads about it. As she has brewed she must bake."

The Captain's wife's baking was lighter and more palatable than her
friends believed. The Captain, who took off his own coat when he came
home, and never wore slippers but in his dressing-room, was domestic
enough.

A selfish companion must, doubtless, be a great trial amid the hardships
of military life, but when a soldier is kind-hearted, he is often a much
more helpful and thoughtful and handy husband than any equally
well-meaning civilian. Amid the ups and downs of their wanderings, the
discomforts of shipboard and of stations in the colonies, bad servants,
and unwonted sicknesses, the Captain's tenderness never failed. If the
life was rough, the Captain was ready. He had been, by turns, in one
strait or another, sick-nurse, doctor, carpenter, nursemaid, and cook to
his family, and had, moreover, an idea that nobody filled these offices
quite so well as himself. Withal, his very profession kept him neat,
well-dressed, and active. In the roughest of their ever-changing
quarters he was a smarter man, more like the lover of his wife's young
days, than Mr. Bull amid his stationary comforts.

Then if the Captain's wife was--as her friends said--"never settled,"
she was also forever entertained by new scenes; and domestic mischances
do not weigh very heavily on people whose possessions are few and their
intellectual interests many.

It is true that there were ladies in the Captain's regiment who passed
by sea and land from one quarter of the globe to another, amid strange
climates and customs, strange trees and flowers, beasts and birds, from
the glittering snow of North America to the orchids of the Cape, from
beautiful Pera to the lily-covered hills of Japan, and who in no place
rose above the fret of domestic worries, and had little to tell on their
return but of the universal misconduct of servants, from Irish "helps"
in the colonies to _compradors_ and China-boys at Shanghai. But it was
not so with the Captain's wife. Moreover, one becomes accustomed to
one's fate, and she moved her whole establishment from the Curragh to
Corfu with less anxiety than that felt by Mrs. Bull over a port-wine
stain on the best table-cloth.

And yet, as years went and children came, the Captain and his wife grew
tired of travelling. New scenes were small comfort when they heard of
the death of old friends. One foot of murky English sky was dearer,
after all, than miles of the unclouded heavens of the South. The gray
hills and overgrown lanes of her old home haunted the Captain's wife by
night and day, and homesickness, that weariest of all sicknesses, began
to take the light out of her eyes before their time. It preyed upon the
Captain, too. Now and then he would say, fretfully, "I should like an
English resting-place, however small, before everybody is dead! But the
children's prospects have to be considered." The continued estrangement
from the old man was an abiding sorrow also, and they had hopes that, if
only they could get to England, he might be persuaded to peace and
charity this time.

At last they were sent home. But the hard old father still would not
relent. He returned their letters unopened. This bitter disappointment
made the Captain's wife so ill that she almost died, and in one month
the Captain's hair became iron gray. He reproached himself for having
ever taken the daughter from her father, "to kill her at last," as he
said. And, thinking of his own children, he even reproached himself for
having robbed the old widower of his only child. After two years at home
his regiment was ordered to India. He failed to effect an exchange, and
they prepared to move once more,--from Chatham to Calcutta. Never before
had the packing, to which she was so well accustomed, been so bitter a
task to the Captain's wife.

It was at the darkest hour of this gloomy time that the Captain came in,
waving above his head a letter which changed all their plans.

Now close by the old home of the Captain's wife there had lived a man,
much older than herself, who yet had loved her with a devotion as great
as that of the young Captain. She never knew it, for, when he saw that
she had given her heart to his young rival, he kept silence, and he
never asked for what he knew he might have had--the old man's authority
in his favor. So generous was the affection which he could never
conquer, that he constantly tried to reconcile the father to his
children while he lived, and, when he died, he bequeathed his house and
small estate to the woman he had loved.

"It will be a legacy of peace," he thought, on his death-bed. "The old
man cannot hold out when she and her children are constantly in sight.
And it may please God that I shall know of the reunion I have not been
permitted to see with my eyes."

And thus it came about that the Captain's regiment went to India without
him, and that the Captain's wife and her father lived on opposite sides
of the same road.

III.

The eldest of the Captain's children was a boy. He was named Robert,
after his grandfather, and seemed to have inherited a good deal of the
old gentleman's character, mixed with gentler traits. He was a fair,
fine boy, tall and stout for his age, with the Captain's regular
features, and, he flattered himself, the Captain's firm step and martial
bearing. He was apt--like his grandfather--to hold his own will to be
other people's law, and happily for the peace of the nursery this
opinion was devoutly shared by his brother Nicholas. Though the Captain
had sold his commission, Robert continued to command an irregular force
of volunteers in the nursery, and never was a colonel more despotic. His
brothers and sisters were by turn infantry, cavalry, engineers, and
artillery, according to his whim, and when his affections finally
settled upon the Highlanders of "The Black Watch," no female power could
compel him to keep his stockings above his knees, or his knickerbockers
below them.

The Captain alone was a match for his strong-willed son.

"If you please, sir," said Sarah, one morning, flouncing in upon the
Captain, just as he was about to start for the neighboring town, "if you
please, sir, I wish you'd speak to Master Robert. He's past my powers."

"I've no doubt of it," thought the Captain; but he only said, "Well,
what's the matter?"

"Night after night do I put him to bed," said Sarah, "and night after
night does he get up as soon as I'm out of the room, and says he's
orderly officer for the evening, and goes about in his night-shirt and
his feet as bare as boards."

The Captain fingered his heavy moustache to hide a smile, but he
listened patiently to Sarah's complaints.

"It ain't so much him I should mind, sir," she continued, "but he goes
round the beds and wakes up the other young gentlemen and Miss Dora, one
after another, and when I speak to him he gives me all the sauce he can
lay his tongue to, and says he's going round the guards. The other night
I tried to put him back in his bed, but he got away and ran all over the
house, me hunting him everywhere, and not a sign of him, till he jumps
out on me from the garret-stairs and nearly knocks me down. 'I've
visited the outposts, Sarah,' says he; 'all's well,' and off he goes to
bed as bold as brass."

"Have you spoken to your mistress?" asked the Captain.

"Yes, sir," said Sarah. "And misses spoke to him, and he promised not to
go round the guards again."

"Has he broken his promise?" asked the Captain, with a look of anger and
also surprise.

"When I opened the door last night, sir," continued Sarah, in her shrill
treble, "what should I see in the dark but Master Robert a-walking up
and down with the carpet-brush stuck in his arm. 'Who goes there?' says
he. 'You owdacious boy!' says I. 'Didn't you promise your ma you'd leave
off them tricks?' 'I'm not going round the guards,' says he; 'I promised
not. But I'm for sentry-duty to-night.' And say what I would to him, all
he had for me was, 'You mustn't speak to a sentry on duty.' So I says,
'As sure as I live till morning, I'll go to your pa,' for he pays no
more attention to his ma than me, nor to any one else."

"Please to see that the chair-bed in my dressing-room is moved into your
mistress's bed-room," said the Captain. "I will attend to Master
Robert."

With this Sarah had to content herself, and she went back to the
nursery. Robert was nowhere to be seen, and made no reply to her
summons. On this the unwary nursemaid flounced into the bed-room to look
for him, when Robert, who was hidden beneath a table, darted forth and
promptly locked her in.

"You're under arrest," he shouted through the keyhole.

"Let me out!" shrieked Sarah.

"I'll send a file of the guard to fetch you to the orderly-room
by-and-by," said Robert, "for 'preferring frivolous complaints,'" and he
departed to the farmyard to look at the ducks.

That night, when Robert went up to bed, the Captain quietly locked him
into his dressing-room, from which the bed had been removed.

"You're for sentry-duty to-night," said the captain, "The carpet-brush
is in the corner. Good-evening."

As his father anticipated, Robert was soon tired of the sentry game in
these new circumstances, and long before the night had half worn away he
wished himself safely undressed and in his own comfortable bed. At
half-past twelve o'clock he felt as if he could bear it no longer, and
knocked at the Captain's door.

"Who goes there?" said the Captain.

"Mayn't I go to bed, please?" whined poor Robert.

"Certainly not," said the Captain. "You're on duty."

And on duty poor Robert had to remain, for the Captain had a will as
well as his son. So he rolled himself up in his father's railway rug and
slept on the floor.

The next night he was glad to go quietly to bed, and remain there.

IV.

The Captain's children sat at breakfast in a large, bright nursery. It
was the room where the old bachelor had died, and now _her_ children
made it merry. This is just what he would have wished.

They all sat round the table, for it was breakfast-time. There were five
of them, and five bowls of boiled bread-and-milk smoked before them.
Sarah, a foolish, gossiping girl, who acted as nurse till better could
be found, was waiting on them, and by the table sat Darkie, the black
retriever, his long, curly back swaying slightly from the difficulty of
holding himself up, and his solemn hazel eyes fixed very intently on
each and all of the breakfast bowls. He was as silent and sagacious as
Sarah was talkative and empty-headed. The expression of his face was
that of King Charles I. as painted by Vandyke. Though large, he was
unassuming. Pax, the pug, on the contrary, who came up to the first
joint of Darkie's leg, stood defiantly on his dignity and his short
stumps. He always placed himself in front of the bigger dog, and made a
point of hustling him in door-ways and of going first down stairs. He
strutted like a beadle, and carried his tail more tightly curled than a
bishop's crook. He looked as one may imagine the frog in the fable would
have looked had he been able to swell himself rather nearer to the size
of the ox. This was partly due to his very prominent eyes, and partly to
an obesity favored by habits of lying inside the fender, and of eating
meals proportioned more to his consequence than to his hunger. They were
both favorites of two years' standing, and had very nearly been given
away, when the good news came of an English home for the family, dogs
and all.

Robert's tongue was seldom idle, even at meals. "Are you a Yorkshire
woman, Sarah?" he asked, pausing, with his spoon full in his hand.

"No, Master Robert," said Sarah.

"But you understand Yorkshire, don't you? I can't, very often; but mamma
can, and can speak it, too. Papa says mamma always talks Yorkshire to
servants and poor people. She used to talk Yorkshire to Themistocles,
papa said, and he said it was no good; for, though Themistocles knew a
lot of languages, he didn't know that. And mamma laughed, and said she
didn't know she did. Themistocles was our man-servant in Corfu," Robin
added, in explanation. "He stole lots of things, Themistocles did; but
papa found him out."

Robin now made a rapid attack on his bread-and-milk, after which he
broke out again,--

"Sarah, who is that tall gentleman at church, in the seat near the
pulpit? He wears a cloak like what the Blues wear, only all blue, and is
tall enough for a Life-guardsman. He stood when we were kneeling down,
and said, 'Almighty and most merciful Father,' louder than anybody."

Sarah knew who the old gentleman was, and knew also that the children
did not know, and that their parents did not see fit to tell them as
yet. But she had a passion for telling and hearing news, and would
rather gossip with a child than not gossip at all. "Never you mind,
Master Robin," she said, nodding sagaciously. "Little boys aren't to
know everything."

"Ah, then, I know you don't know," replied Robert; "if you did, you'd
tell. Nicholas, give some of your bread to Darkie and Pax. I've done
mine. For what we have received, the Lord make us truly thankful. Say
your grace, and put your chair away, and come along. I want to hold a
court-martial." And, seizing his own chair by the seat, Robin carried it
swiftly to its corner. As he passed Sarah, he observed, tauntingly, "You
pretend to know, but you don't."

"I do," said Sarah.

"You don't," said Robin.

"Your ma's forbid you to contradict, Master Robin," said Sarah; "and if
you do, I shall tell her. I know well enough who the old gentleman is,
and perhaps I might tell you, only you'd go straight off and tell
again."

"No, no, I wouldn't!" shouted Robin. "I can keep a secret; indeed, I
can! Pinch my little finger, and try. Do, do tell me, Sarah; there's a
dear Sarah, and then I shall know you know." And he danced round her,
catching at her skirts.

To keep a secret was beyond Sarah's powers.

"Do let my dress be, Master Robin," she said; "you're ripping out all
the gathers, and listen while I whisper. As sure as you're a living boy,
that gentleman's your own grandpapa."

Robin lost his hold on Sarah's dress; his arm fell by his side, and he
stood with his brows knit, for some minutes, thinking. Then he said,
emphatically,--

"What lies you do tell, Sarah!"

"Oh, Robin!" cried Nicholas, who had drawn near, his thick curls
standing stark with curiosity; "mamma said 'lies' wasn't a proper word,
and you promised not to say it again."

"I forgot," said Robin. "I didn't mean to break my promise. But she does
tell--ahem!--you know what."

"You wicked boy!" cried the enraged Sarah; "how dare you say such a
thing, and everybody in the place knows he's your ma's own pa."

"I'll go and ask her," said Robin, and he was at the door in a moment;
but Sarah, alarmed by the thought of getting into a scrape herself,
caught him by the arm.

"Don't you go, love; it'll only make your ma angry. There; it was all my
nonsense."

"Then it's not true?" said Robin, indignantly. "What did you tell me so
for?"

"It was all my jokes and nonsense," said the unscrupulous Sarah. "But
your ma wouldn't like to know I've said such a thing. And Master Robert
wouldn't be so mean as to tell tales, would he, love?"

"I'm not mean," said Robin, stoutly; "and I don't tell tales; but you
do, and you tell--you know what--besides. However, I won't go this time;
but I'll tell you what,--if you tell tales of me to papa any more, I'll
tell him what you said about the old gentleman in the blue cloak." With
which parting threat Robin strode off to join his brothers and sister.

Sarah's tale had put the court-martial out of his head, and he leaned
against the tall fender, gazing at his little sister, who was tenderly
nursing a well-worn doll. Robin sighed.

"What a long time that doll takes to wear out, Dora!" said he. "When
will it be done?"

"Oh, not yet, not yet!" cried Dora, clasping the doll to her, and
turning away. "She's quite good, yet."

"How miserly you are," said her brother; "and selfish, too; for you
know I can't have a military funeral till you'll let me bury that old
thing."

Dora began to cry.

"There you go, crying!" said Robin, impatiently. "Look here: I won't
take it till you get the new one on your birthday. You can't be so mean
as not to let me have it then!"

But Dora's tears still fell. "I love this one so much," she sobbed. "I
love her better than the new one."

"You want both; that's it," said Robin, angrily. "Dora, you're the
meanest girl I ever knew!"

At which unjust and painful accusation Dora threw herself and her doll
upon their faces, and wept bitterly. The eyes of the soft-hearted
Nicholas began to fill with tears, and he squatted down before her,
looking most dismal. He had a fellow-feeling for her attachment to an
old toy, and yet Robin's will was law to him.

"Couldn't we make a coffin, and pretend the body was inside?" he
suggested.

"No, we couldn't," said Robin. "I wouldn't play the 'Dead March' after
an empty candle-box. It's a great shame,--and I promised she should be
chaplain in one of my night-gowns, too."

"Perhaps you'll get just as fond of the new one," said Nicholas, turning
to Dora.

But Dora only cried, "No, no! He shall have the new one to bury, and
I'll keep my poor, dear, darling Betsey." And she clasped Betsey tighter
than before.

"That's the meanest thing you've said yet," retorted Robin; "for you
know mamma wouldn't let me bury the new one." And, with an air of great
disgust, he quitted the nursery.

V.

Nicholas had sore work to console his little sister, and Betsey's
prospects were in a very unfavorable state, when a diversion was caused
in her favor by a new whim which put the military funeral out of Robin's
head.

After he left the nursery he strolled out of doors, and, peeping through
the gate at the end of the drive, he saw a party of boys going through
what looked like a military exercise with sticks and a good deal of
stamping; but instead of mere words of command, they all spoke by turns,
as in a play. In spite of their strong Yorkshire accent, Robin overheard
a good deal, and it sounded very fine.

Not being at all shy, he joined them, and asked so many questions that
he soon got to know all about it. They were practising a Christmas
mumming-play, called "The Peace Egg." Why it was called that they could
not tell him, as there was nothing whatever about eggs in it, and, so
far as its being a play of peace, it was made up of a series of battles
between certain valiant knights and princes, of whom St. George of
England was chief and conqueror. The rehearsal being over, Robin went
with the boys to the sexton's house, (he was father to the "King of
Egypt,") where they showed him the dresses they were to wear. These were
made of gay-colored materials, and covered with ribbons, except that of
the "Black Prince of Paradine," which was black, as became his title.
The boys also showed him the book from which they learned their parts,
and which was to be bought for one penny at the post-office shop.

"Then are you the mummers who come round at Christmas, and act in
people's kitchens, and people give them money, that mamma used to tell
us about?" said Robin.

St. George of England looked at his companions as if for counsel as to
how far they might commit themselves, and then replied, with Yorkshire
caution, "Well, I suppose we are."

"And do you go out in the snow from one house to another at night; and,
oh, don't you enjoy it?" cried Robin.

"We like it well enough," St. George admitted.

[Illustration: Mummers]

Robin bought a copy of "The Peace Egg." He was resolved to have a
nursery performance, and to act the part of St. George himself. The
others were willing for what he wished, but there were difficulties.

In the first place, there are eight characters in the play, and there
were only five children. They decided among themselves to leave out the
"Fool," and mamma said that another character was not to be acted by any
of them, or, indeed, mentioned; "the little one who comes in at the
end," Robin explained. Mamma had her reasons, and these were always
good. She had not been altogether pleased that Robin had bought the
play. It was a very old thing, she said, and very queer; not adapted for
a child's play.

If mamma thought the parts not quite fit for the children to learn, they
found them much too long; so, in the end, she picked out some bits for
each, which they learned easily, and which, with a good deal of
fighting, made quite as good a story of it as if they had done the
whole. What may have been wanting otherwise was made up for by the
dresses, which were charming.

Robin was St. George, Nicholas the Valiant Slasher, Dora the Doctor, and
the other two Hector and the King of Egypt. "And now we've no Black
Prince!" cried Robin, in dismay.

"Let Darkie be the Black Prince," said Nicholas. "When you have your
stick he'll jump for it, and then you can pretend to fight with him."

"It's not a stick, it's a sword," said Robin "However, Darkie may be the
Black Prince."

"And what's Pax to be?" asked Dora; "for you know he will come if Darkie
does, and he'll run in before everybody else, too."

"Then he must be the Fool," said Robin; "and it will do very well, for
the Fool comes in before the rest, and Pax can have his red coat on, and
the collar with the little bells."

VI.

Robin thought that Christmas would never come. To the Captain and his
wife it seemed to come too fast. They had hoped it might bring
reconciliation with the old man, but it seemed they had hoped in vain.

There were times, now, when the Captain almost regretted the old
bachelor's bequest. The familiar scenes of her old home sharpened his
wife's grief. To see her father every Sunday in church, with marks of
age and infirmity upon him, but with not a look of tenderness for his
only child, this tried her sorely.

"She felt it less abroad," thought the Captain. "An English home, in
which she frets herself to death, is, after all, no great boon."

Christmas Eve came.

"I'm sure it's quite Christmas enough, now," said Robin. "We'll have
'The Peace Egg' to-night."

So, as the Captain and his wife sat sadly over their fire, the door
opened, and Pax ran in, shaking his bells, and followed by the nursery
mummers. The performance was most successful. It was by no means
pathetic, and yet, as has been said, the Captain's wife shed tears.

"What is the matter, mamma?" said St. George, abruptly dropping his
sword and running up to her.

"Don't tease mamma with questions," said the Captain; "she is not very
well, and rather sad. We must all be very kind and good to poor, dear
mamma;" and the Captain raised his wife's hand to his lips as he spoke.
Robin seized the other hand and kissed it tenderly. He was very fond of
his mother. At this moment Pax took a little run and jumped on to
mamma's lap, where, sitting facing the company, he opened his black
mouth and yawned with a ludicrous inappropriateness worthy of any clown.
It made everybody laugh.

"And now we'll go and act in the kitchen," said Nicholas.

"Supper at nine o'clock, remember," shouted the Captain. "And we are
going to have real frumenty and Yule-cakes, such as mamma used to tell
us of when we were abroad."

"Hurray!" shouted the mummers, and they ran off, Pax leaping from his
seat just in time to hustle the Black Prince in the doorway.

When the dining-room door was shut, St. George raised his hand, and
said, "Hush!"

The mummers pricked their ears, but there was only a distant harsh and
scraping sound, as of stones rubbed together.

"They're cleaning the passages," St. George went on; "and Sarah told me
they meant to finish the mistletoe, and have everything cleaned up by
supper-time. They don't want us, I know. Look here; we will go real
mumming, instead. That will be fun!"

The Valiant Slasher grinned with delight.

"But will mamma let us?" he inquired.

"Oh, it will be all right if we are back by supper-time," said St.
George, hastily. "Only, of course, we must take care not to catch cold.
Come and help me to get some wraps."

The old oak chest in which spare shawls, rugs, and coats were kept was
soon ransacked, and the mummers' gay dresses hidden by motley wrappers.
But no sooner did Darkie and Pax behold the coats, etc., than they at
once began to leap and bark, as it was their custom to do when they saw
any one dressing to go out.

Robin was sorely afraid that this would betray them; but, though the
Captain and his wife heard the barking, they did not guess the cause.
So, the front door being very gently opened and closed, the nursery
mummers stole away.

VII.

It was a very fine night. The snow was well trodden on the drive, so
that it did not wet their feet, but on the trees and shrubs it hung soft
and white.

"It's much jollier being out at night than in the daytime," said Robin.

"Much," responded Nicholas, with intense feeling.

"We'll go a wassailing next week," said Robin. "I know all about it; and
perhaps we shall get a good lot of money, and then we'll buy tin swords
with scabbards for next year. I don't like these sticks. Oh, dear, I
wish it wasn't so long between one Christmas and another."

"Where shall we go first?" asked Nicholas, as they turned into the
high-road. But before Robin could reply, Dora clung to Nicholas, crying,
"Oh, look at those men!"

The boys looked up the road, down which three men were coming in a very
unsteady fashion, and shouting as they rolled from side to side.

"They're drunk," said Nicholas; "and they're shouting at us."

"Oh, run, run!" cried Dora; and down the road they ran, the men shouting
and following them. They had not run far, when Hector caught his foot in
the Captain's great-coat which he was wearing, and came down headlong in
the road. They were close by a gate, and when Nicholas had set Hector on
his legs, St. George hastily opened it.

"This is the first house," he said. "We'll act here;" and all, even the
Valiant Slasher, pressed in as quickly as possible. Once safe within the
grounds, they shouldered their sticks and resumed their composure.

"You're going to the front door," said Nicholas. "Mummers ought to go to
the back."

"We don't know where it is," said Robin, and he rang the front-door
bell. There was a pause. Then lights shone, steps were heard, and at
last a sound of much unbarring, unbolting, and unlocking. It might have
been a prison. Then the door was opened by an elderly, timid-looking
woman, who held a tallow candle above her head.

"Who's there," she said, "at this time of night?"

"We're Christmas mummers," said Robin, stoutly; "we didn't know the way
to the back door, but----"

"And don't you know better than to come here?" said the woman. "Be off
with you, as fast as you can!"

"You're only the servant," said Robin. "Go and ask your master and
mistress if they wouldn't like to see us act. We do it very well."

"You impudent boy, be off with you!" repeated the woman. "Master'd no
more let you nor any other such rubbish set foot in this house----"

"Woman!" shouted a voice close behind her, which made her start as if
she had been shot, "who authorizes you to say what your master will or
will not do, before you ask him? The boy is right. You are the servant,
and it is not your business to choose for me whom I shall or shall not
see."

"I meant no harm, sir, I'm sure," said the house-keeper; "but I thought
you'd never----"

"My good woman," said her master, "if I had wanted somebody to think for
me, you're the last person I should have employed. I hire you to obey
orders, not to think."

"I'm sure, sir," said the house-keeper, whose only form of argument was
reiteration, "I never thought you would have seen them----"

"Then you were wrong," shouted her master. "I will see them. Bring them
in."

He was a tall, gaunt old man, and Robin stared at him for some minutes,
wondering where he could have seen somebody very like him. At last he
remembered. It was the old gentleman of the blue cloak.

The children threw off their wraps, the house-keeper helping them, and
chatting ceaselessly, from sheer nervousness.

"Well, to be sure," said she, "their dresses are pretty, too, and they
seem quite a better sort of children; they talk quite genteel. I might
ha' knowed they weren't like common mummers, but I was so flustered
hearing the bell go so late, and----"

"Are they ready?" said the old man, who had stood like a ghost in the
dim light of the flaring tallow candle, grimly watching the proceedings.

"Yes, sir. Shall I take them to the kitchen sir----"

"For you and the other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them
to the library," he snapped, and then he stalked off, leading the way.

The house-keeper accordingly led them to the library and then withdrew,
nearly falling on her face as she left the room by stumbling over
Darkie, who clipped in last like a black shadow.

The old man was seated in a carved oak chair by the fire.

"I never said the dogs were to come in," he said.

"But we can't do without them, please," said Robin, boldly. "You see,
there are eight people in 'The Peace Egg,' and there are only five of
us; and so Darkie has to be the Black Prince, and Pax has to be the
Fool, and so we have to have them."

"Five and two make seven," said the old man, with a grim smile; "what do
you do for the eighth?"

"Oh, that's the little one at the end," said Robin, confidentially.
"Mamma said we weren't to mention him, but I think that's because we're
children. You're grown up, you know, so I'll show you the book, and you
can see for yourself," he went on, drawing "The Peace Egg" from his
pocket. "There, that's the picture of him on the last page; black, with
horns and a tail."

The old man's stern face relaxed into a broad smile as he examined the
grotesque wood-cut; but, when he turned to the first page, the smile
vanished in a deep frown, and his eyes shone like hot coals, with
anger. He had seen Robin's name.

"Who sent you here?" he asked, in a hoarse voice. "Speak, and speak the
truth! Did your mother send you here?"

Robin thought the old man was angry with them for playing truant. He
said slowly, "N--no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think
she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma
never forbid our going mumming, you know."

"I don't suppose she ever thought of it," Nicholas said, candidly,
wagging his curly head from side to side.

"She knows we're mummers," said Robin, "for she helped us. When we were
abroad, you know, she used to tell us about the mummers acting at
Christmas when she was a little girl. And so we acted to papa and mamma,
and so we thought we'd act to the maids, but they were cleaning the
passages, and so we thought we'd really go mumming; and we've got
several other houses to go to before supper-time. We'd better begin, I
think," said Robin, and without more ado he began to march round and
round, raising his sword and shouting,--

    "I am St. George, who from Old England sprung,
    My famous name throughout the world hath rung."

And the performance went off quite as creditably as before.

As the children acted, the old man's anger wore off. He watched them
with an interest he could not repress. When Nicholas took some hard
thwacks from St. George without flinching, the old man clapped his
hands; and, after the encounter between St. George and the Black Prince,
he said he would not have the dogs excluded on any consideration. It was
just at the end, when they were all marching round and round, holding on
by each other's swords "over the shoulder," and singing "A mumming we
will go, etc.," that Nicholas suddenly brought the circle to a
stand-still by stopping dead short and staring up at the wall before
him.

"What are you stopping for?" said St. George, turning indignantly round.

"Look there!" cried Nicholas, pointing to a little painting which hung
above the old man's head.

Robin looked, and said, abruptly, "It's Dora."

"Which is Dora?" asked the old man, in a strange, sharp tone.

"Here she is," said Robin and Nicholas in one breath, as they dragged
her forward.

"She's the Doctor," said Robin; "and you can't see her face for her
things. Dor, take off your cap and pull back that hood. There! Oh, it
is like her!"

It was a portrait of her mother as a child; but of this the nursery
mummers knew nothing.

The old man looked as the peaked cap and hood fell away from Dora's face
and fair curls and then he uttered a sharp cry and buried his head upon
his hands. The boys stood stupefied, but Dora ran up to him and, putting
her little hands on his arms, said, in childish, pitying tones, "Oh, I
am so sorry! Have you got a headache? May Robin put the shovel in the
fire for you? Mamma has hot shovels for her headaches." And, though the
old man did not speak or move, she went on coaxing him and stroking his
head, on which the hair was white. At this moment Pax took one of his
unexpected runs and jumped on the old man's knee, in his own particular
fashion, and then yawned at the company. The old man was startled, and
lifted his face suddenly.

It was wet with tears.

"Why, you're crying!" exclaimed the children, with one breath.

"It's very odd," said Robin, fretfully. "I can't think what's the matter
to-night. Mamma was crying, too, when we were acting; and papa said we
weren't to tease her with questions; and he kissed her hand, and I
kissed her hand, too. And papa said we must all be very kind to poor,
dear mamma; and so I mean to be, she's so good. And I think we'd better
go home, or perhaps she'll be frightened," Robin added.

"She's so good, is she?" asked the old man. He had put Pax off his knee
and taken Dora on to it.

"Oh, isn't she!" said Nicholas, swaying his curly head from side to side
as usual.

"She's always good," said Robin, emphatically; "and so's papa. But I'm
always doing something I oughtn't to," he added, slowly. "But then you
know I don't pretend to obey Sarah. I don't care a fig for Sarah; and I
won't obey any woman but mamma."

"Who's Sarah?" asked the grandfather.

"She's our nurse," said Robin; "and she tells--I mustn't say what she
tells,--but it's not the truth. She told one about you the other day,"
he added.

"About me?" said the old man.

"She said you were our grandpapa. So then I knew she was telling 'you
know what.'"

"How did you know it wasn't true?" the old man asked.

"Why, of course," said Robin, "if you were our mamma's father, you'd
know her, and be fond of her, and come and see her. And then you'd be
our grandfather, too, and you'd have us to see you, and perhaps give us
Christmas-boxes. I wish you were," Robin added, with a sigh; "it would
be very nice."

"Would you like it?" asked the old man of Dora.

And Dora, who was half asleep and very comfortable, put her little arms
about his neck as she was wont to put them round the Captain's, and
said, "Very much."

He put her down at last, very tenderly, almost unwillingly, and left the
children alone. By-and-by he returned, dressed in the blue cloak, and
took Dora up again.

"I will see you home," he said.

The children had not been missed. The clock had only just struck nine
when there came a knock on the door of the dining-room, where the
Captain and his wife sat still by the Yule-log. She said "Come in,"
wearily, thinking it was the frumenty and the Christmas cakes.

But it was her father, with her child in his arms!

VIII.

Lucy Jane Bull and her sisters were quite old enough to understand a
good deal of grownup conversation when they overheard it. Thus, when a
friend of Mrs. Bull's observed, during an afternoon call, that she
believed that "officers wives were very dressy," the young ladies were
at once resolved to keep a sharp lookout for the Captain's wife's bonnet
in church on Christmas day.

The Bulls had just taken their seats when the Captain's wife came in.
They really would have hid their faces, and looked at the bonnet
afterwards, but for the startling sight that met the gaze of the
congregation. The old grandfather walked into the church abreast of the
Captain.

"They've met in the porch," whispered Mr. Bull, under the shelter of his
hat.

"They can't quarrel publicly in a place of worship," said Mrs. Bull,
turning pale.

"She's gone into his seat," cried Lucy Jane, in a shrill whisper.

"And the children after her," added the other sister, incautiously
aloud.

There was no doubt about the matter. The old man, in his blue cloak,
stood for a few moments politely disputing the question of precedence
with his handsome son-in-law. Then the Captain bowed and passed in, and
the old man followed him.

By the time that the service was ended everybody knew of the happy
peace-making, and was glad. One old friend after another came up with
blessings and good wishes. This was a proper Christmas, indeed, they
said. There was a general rejoicing.

But only the grandfather and his children knew that it was hatched from
"The Peace Egg."

    _By a Bavarian Comrade._

    "Over his tumbler of Gukguk he
    sat reading journals, sometimes
    contemplatively looking into
    the clouds of his tobacco-pipe:
    an agreeable phenomenon,--more
    especially when he opened
    his lips for speech."

    _Carlyle._

A STORY OF NUREMBERG.

It was a Christmas eve in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and
through the streets of Nuremberg came drifting a feathery snow that
heaped itself in fantastic patterns on the projecting windows and
fretted stone balconies of the quaint and crowded houses. It was not an
honest and single-minded snow-storm, such as would seek to shroud the
whole city in its delicate white mantle, but rather a tricksy and
capricious sprite, that neglected one spot to hurl itself with wanton
violence on another. Borne on the breath of a keen and shifting wind, it
came tossing gleefully full in the face of a solitary artisan who,
wrapped in a heavy cloak, was making the best of his way homeward. Truly
it was not a pleasant night to be abroad, with the snow-drifts dancing
in your eyes like a million of tiny arrow-points, and the sharp wind
cutting like a knife; and the wayfarer was consoling himself for his
present discomfort by picturing the warm fireside and the hot supper
that awaited him at home, when his cheerful dreams were broken by a
sharp cry that seemed to come from under his very feet.

Startled, and not a little alarmed, he checked his rapid walk and
listened. There was no mistaking the sound: it was neither imp nor
fairy, but a real child, from whose little lungs came forth that wail at
once pitiful and querulous. As he heard it, Peter Burkgmäier's kindly
heart flew with one rapid bound to the cradle at home where slumbered
his own infant daughter, and, hastily lowering his lantern, he searched
under the dark archway whence the cry had come. There, sheltered by the
wall and wrapped in a ragged cloak, was a baby boy, perhaps between two
and three years old, but so tiny and emaciated as to seem hardly half
that age. When the lantern flickered in his face he gave a frightened
sob, and then lay quiet and exhausted in the strong arms that held him.

"Poor little wretch!" said the man. "Abandoned on Christmas eve to die
in the snow!" And wrapping the child more closely in his own mantle, he
hurried on until he reached his home, from whose latticed panes shone
forth a cheerful stream of light. His wife, with her baby on her breast,
met him at the door, and stared with a not unnatural amazement as her
husband unrolled his cloak and showed her the boy, who, blinking
painfully at the sudden light, tried to struggle down from his arms.

"See, Lisbeth!" he said, "I have found you a Christmas present where I
least expected one--an unhappy baby left in the streets to die of cold
and hunger."

His wife laid her own infant in the cradle and gazed alternately at her
husband and at the child he carried. She was at all times slow to
receive impressions, and slower yet to put her thoughts into words. When
she spoke, it was without apparent emotion of any kind. "What are you
going to do with him, Peter?" she said.

"What am I going to do with him?" was the reply. "I am going to feed and
clothe and shelter him, and make an honest man out of him, please God.
It cannot be that you would refuse the poor child a home?"

Lisbeth made no answer. She was a large, fair, sleepy-eyed woman, who
had been accounted a beauty in her day. A model wife, too, people said;
neat in dress, quiet of tongue, her conduct staid, her whole thoughts
centred in her household. She now took the boy, noting with a woman's
eye his coarse and ragged clothing, and stood him on his unsteady little
feet. A faint expression of disgust rippled over her smooth, unthinking
face.

"He is a humpback," she said, slowly.

Her husband started to his feet. In all ages physical deformity has been
a thing repulsive to our eyes; but at this early day it was regarded
with unmixed horror and aversion, and was too often considered as the
index of a crooked mind within. Peter Burkgmäier, tall and erect, with a
frame of iron and sinews of steel, as became a master stone-mason, stood
gazing at the poor little atom of misshapen humanity who tottered over
the polished wooden floor. The spinal column was sadly bent, and from
between the humped shoulders the pale face peered with an old, uncanny
look. Yet the boy was not otherwise ugly. His forehead was broad and
smooth, and his dark blue eyes were well and deeply set. The artisan
watched him for a minute in painful silence, then turned to his wife and
took her passive hand in his.

"Lisbeth," he said, with grave kindness, "I know that I am asking a
great deal of you when I beg you to take this child under our roof. He
will be to you much care and trouble, and may never find his way into
your heart. At any other time, believe me, I would not put this burden
on your shoulders. But it is Christmas eve, and were I to refuse a
shelter to this helpless baby I would feel like one of those who had no
room within their inns for the Holy Child. Dear wife, will you not
receive him for love of me and of God, and let him share with little
Kala in your care?"

Lisbeth's only reply was one characteristic of the woman. She was moved
by her husband's appeal, against what she considered her better
judgment; and without a single word she picked up the boy from the floor
and laid him in the cradle by the side of her own little daughter. Then,
with a smile--and her smiles came but rarely--she proceeded to carry off
Peter's wet cloak and to bring in his supper. So with this mute assent
the matter was settled, and the deformed child was received into the
stone-mason's family.

And in a different way he became the source of much gratification to
both husband and wife. The first regarded him with real kindness and an
almost fatherly affection, for the boy soon began to manifest a quick
intelligence and a winning gentleness that might readily have found
their way into a harder heart. Lisbeth, too, had her reward; for it was
sweet to her soul to hear her neighbors say, as they stopped to watch
the two children playing in the doorway: "Ah! Lisbeth, it is not many a
woman who would take the care you do of a wretched little humpback like
that;" or, "It was a lucky chance for the poor child that threw him
into such hands as yours, Mistress Burkgmäier;" or, "Did ever little
Kala look so fair and straight as when she had that crooked boy by her
side?"

And did not the good pastor from the Frauenkirche say to her, with tears
starting in his gentle eyes: "God will surely reward you for your
kindness to this helpless little one?" Nay, better yet, did not the
Stadtholder's lady lean out from her beautiful carriage, and say before
three of the neighbors, who were standing by and heard every word: "You
are a good woman, Mistress Burkgmäier, to take the same care of this
miserable child as of your own pretty little daughter"?--which was
something to be really proud of; for, whereas it was the obvious duty of
a priest to admire a virtuous act, it was not often that a noble lady
deigned thus to express her approbation.

Yes, Lisbeth felt, as she listened serenely to all this praise--surely
so well merited--that there was some compensation in the world for such
charitable deeds as hers, even when they involved a fair amount of
sacrifice. And little Gabriel, before whom many of these remarks were
uttered, pondered over them in secret, and gradually evolved three facts
from the curious puzzle of his life--first, that he did not really
belong to what seemed to be his home; second, that he was not loved in
it as was Kala; third, that Kala was pretty and he was ugly. So with
these three melancholy scraps of knowledge the poor child began his
earthly education.

And Kala was very pretty. Tall and strong-limbed, with her mother's
beautiful hair and skin, and with her mother's clear, meaningless blue
eyes, the little girl attracted attention wherever she was seen. No
better foil to her vigorous young beauty could have been found than the
pale, misshapen boy whom all the world called ugly. The children played
together under Lisbeth's watchful eye, and Gabriel in all things yielded
to his companion's imperious will, so that peace reigned ever over their
sports. But when Sigmund Wahnschaffe, the son of the bronze-worker in
the neighboring street, joined them, then Kala would have no more of
Gabriel's company. For Sigmund was strong as a young Hercules and
surpassed all the other lads in their boyish games. When he would play
with her, Kala turned her back ungratefully upon the patient companion
of her idler moments, who was fain to watch in silence the pleasures he
might not share.

Yet from Sigmund she met no easy compliance with her wishes. His will
was a law not to be disputed, and once, when she had ventured to assert
herself in rebellious fashion, he promptly maintained his precedence by
pushing her into the mud. Kala began to cry, and, like a flash, Gabriel,
in a storm of rage, flung himself upon the older boy, only to be shaken
off as a feather into the same muddy gutter. It was over in a minute,
nor would Sigmund deign to further punish the little humpback who had
been ridiculous enough to attack him. Serenely unmoved he strolled away,
while Kala and Gabriel went sadly home together, to be both well scolded
for the ruin of their clothes and sent supperless to bed; Lisbeth
priding herself, above all things, on the strictly impartial character
of her retributive justice.

But Gabriel had at least one pastime which could be shared with none,
and which bade fair to recompense him for all the childish sports he was
denied. With a small block of wood and a few simple tools his skilful
fingers wrought such wonders that Kala and Sigmund, and the very
children who hooted at him in the street, could not withhold their
admiration,--sometimes a brooding dove with pretty, ruffled plumage;
sometimes the head and curving horns of a mountain chamois, instinct
with graceful life; sometimes a group of snails, each tiny spiral
reproduced with loving accuracy in the hard grained wood. To Peter
Burkgmäier these evidences of a talent then in such high repute gave
most unbounded satisfaction. His own trade was far too severe for the
boy's frail strength, but wood-carving was fully as profitable, and
might lead to wealth and fame. Had not Veit Stoss, of whose genius
Nuremberg felt justly proud, already finished his wonderful group of
angels saluting the Virgin, which hung from the roof of St. Lorenz? With
such an example before him, what might not the boy hope to achieve
through talent and persevering labor? And Gabriel felt his own heart
burn as he looked with wistful eyes upon that masterpiece of rare and
delicate carving.

Nuremberg was then alive with the spirit of art, and everywhere he
turned there was something beautiful to quicken his pulse and feed the
flame within his soul, that was half rapture and half bitterness. No
idle boast was the old rhyme,--

    "Nuremberg's hand
    Goes through every land."

For the city's renown had spread far and wide, and in its many branches
of industry, as well as in the higher walks of art, it had reached the
zenith of its fame. Already, indeed, the canker-worm was gnawing at the
root, and unerring retribution was creeping on a blinded people; but no
sign of the future was manifested in the universal prosperity of the
day. Every street furnished its food for the artist's soul: the
Frauenkirche, enriched with the loving gifts of devout generations; St.
Sebald's, with its carved portal, its stained windows, its treasures of
bronze, and, above all, the shrine where Peter Vischer and his sons
labored for thirteen years. Gabriel loved St. Sebald's dearly, but
closer still to his heart was the majestic church of St. Lorenz, where,
in sharp relief against the dull red pillars, rose that dream in stone,
the Sacrament House of Adam Krafft, its slender, fretted spire springing
to the very roof, clasped in the embrace of the curling vine tendrils
carved around it.

Here the boy would linger for hours, never weary of studying every
detail of this faultless shrine. With envious eyes he gazed upon the
kneeling figures of Adam Krafft and his two fellow-laborers, who, carved
in stone, now supported the treasure their hands had wrought. Surely
this was the crowning summit of human ambition--to live thus forever in
the house of God, and before the eyes of men, a part of the very work
which had ennobled the artist's life. Ah! if he, the despised humpback,
could but descend to posterity immortalized by the labor of his hands.
What to the dreaming lad was the picture of Adam Krafft dying in a
hospital, poor, unfriended, and alone, in the midst of a city his genius
had enriched? What was it to him that Nuremberg, which now heaped honors
on the dead, had denied bread to the living? Such bitter truths come not
to the young. They are the heritage of age, and Gabriel was but a boy,
with all a boy's fond hopes and aspirations. Often as he studied the
graceful beauty of the Sacrament House, where, cut in the pure white
stone, he saw the Last Supper and Christ blessing little children, he
wondered whether among those Jewish boys and girls was one who, deformed
and repulsive to the eye, yet felt the Saviour's loving touch and was
comforted.

A few more years rolled by, and each succeeding spring saw Kala taller
and prettier, and Gabriel working harder still at his laborious art. Not
so engrossed, however, but that he knew that Kala was fair, and that
when her soft fingers touched his a swift and sudden fire leaped through
his heart. Kala's beauty lurked in his dreams by night and in his long,
solitary days of toil, and became the motive power of all his best
endeavors. If he should gain wealth, it would be but to lay it at her
feet. If he, the desolate waif, should win fame and distinction, it
would be but to gild her name with his. Surely these things must be
some recompense in a woman's eyes for a pale face and a stunted form;
and Gabriel, lost in foolish dreams, worked on.

Sigmund Wahnschaffe, too, had grown into early manhood and had adopted
his father's calling. Strong arms were as useful in their way as a
creative brain, and if Sigmund could never be an artist like Peter
Vischer, he promised at least to make an excellent workman. People said
he was the handsomest young artisan in Nuremberg, with his dark skin
bronzed by the fires among which he labored, and his black eyes
sparkling with a keen and merry light. Times had changed since the day
he pushed little Kala into the mud, and he looked upon her now as some
frail and delicate blossom, that to handle would be desecration. Yet
Kala was no rare flower, but a common plant, with nothing remarkable
about her except her beauty; and, once married, Sigmund would be prompt
enough to recognize this fact. Gabriel, with a chivalrous and
imaginative soul, might perhaps retain his ideal unbroken till his
death; but in the young bronze-worker's practical mind ideals had no
place, and his bride would slip naturally into the post of housewife,
from whom nothing more exalted would be demanded than thrifty habits and
a cheerful temper.

And Kala knew perfectly that both these young men loved her, and that
one day she would be called upon to choose between them, between
Sigmund, strong, handsome, and resolute, with a laugh and a gay word for
all who met him; and Gabriel, dwarfed and silent, who had caught the
trick of melancholy in his unloved childhood and could not shake it off.
But it was not merely the sense of physical deformity that saddened
Gabriel's soul. The air he breathed was filled with a subtle spirit of
discord; for upon Nuremberg, with her many churches and monuments of
mediæval art, the Reformation had laid its chilling hand. Its influence
was felt on every side--in art, where the joyous simplicity of
Wohlgemuth had given place to the fantastic melancholy of Albrecht
Dürer, fit imprint of a troubled and storm-tossed mind; as well as in
literature, where the bitter raillery and coarse jests of Hans Sachs,
the cobbler-poet, now passed with swift approval from mouth to mouth.

The day had not yet come when Nuremberg, in her blind arrogance, was to
close her gates upon those who had given her life and fame; but already
were heard the first faint murmurs of the approaching storm. What wonder
that Gabriel shrank from the darkening future, and that men like Peter
Burkgmäier, pondering with set mouths and frowning brows, were slowly
making up their minds that the city which had been their birthplace
should never shelter their old age. But Lisbeth went stolidly about the
daily routine of her life; Kala's smiles were as bright and as frequent
as ever; and Sigmund troubled himself not at all with matters beyond his
ken.

Winter had set in early, and already November had brought in its train
snow and biting winds, and the promise of severe cold to come. It was a
busy season for the bronze-workers, and Sigmund toiled unceasingly, his
cheerful thoughts giving zest to his labors and new strength to his
mighty arm. For did not each evening see him by Kala's side, and had she
not, after months of vain coquetting, at last fairly yielded up her
heart?

"Kala will make a good wife," said Lisbeth, proudly. "And she goes not
empty-handed to her husband's house."

"They are a well-matched pair," said Peter, meditatively. "Health and
beauty and dulness are no mean heritage in these troubled times."

And though the neighbors hesitated to call the young couple dull, they
one and all agreed that the marriage was a suitable one, and that they
had long foreseen it. "Why, they were little lovers in childhood, even!"
said Theresa, the wife of Johann Dyne, the toy-vender in the next
street; and Kala, who had perhaps forgotten the time when her
child-lover had knocked her into the gutter, smiled, and showed her
beautiful white teeth, and suffered the remark to pass uncontradicted.

But even the most stolid of women have always some lurking tenderness
for those who they know have loved them vainly, and Kala, though she had
without a demur accepted Sigmund for her husband, yet broke the news to
Gabriel with much gentleness, and was greatly comforted by the apparent
composure with which it was received. He grew perhaps a trifle paler and
quieter than before, if such a thing were possible, and shut himself up
more resolutely with his work; but that was all. No one would have
dreamed that life with its fair promises had suddenly grown worthless in
his hands, and that the rich gifts which still were left him seemed as
nothing compared with the valueless treasure he had lost. Even his art
had become hateful, freighted as it was with dead hopes; and often, when
all believed him to be toiling in his little den, he was wandering
aimlessly through the streets of Nuremberg, seeking comfort in those
haunts which had once been to him as dear friends and companions. For
hours he would linger in the church of St. Lorenz, and then slowly make
his way to the Thiergarten Gate, where, along the Seilersgasse to the
churchyard, rise at regular intervals the seven stone pillars on which
Adam Krafft has carved, in beautiful bas-reliefs, scenes from the
Passion of the Lord. Years before the simple piety of a Nuremberg
citizen had erected these monuments of holy art, and their founder,
Martin Ketzel, had even travelled into Palestine, that he might measure
the exact distances of that most sorrowful journey from the house of
Pontius Pilate to the hill of Calvary. Heedless of the severe weather,
Gabriel visited daily these primitive stations, striving to forget his
own bitterness in the presence of a divine grief; and, laying his
troubled heart at his Saviour's feet, would return, strengthened and
comforted, into the busy city.

Christmas now was drawing near, and with its approach a new resolve took
possession of his soul. A fresh light had dawned upon him, and, shaking
off his apathy, he started to work in earnest. All day long he toiled
with a steady purpose, though none were permitted to see the fruit of
his labors. Kala, indeed, unaccustomed to be thwarted in her curiosity,
presented herself at his work-shop door and implored admittance; but not
even to her was the secret revealed.

"It is very unkind of you!" she pouted, hardly doubting that she would
gain her point. "You never kept anything from me in your life before."

Gabriel took her hand and looked with strange, wistful eyes into her
pretty face. "I am keeping nothing from you now," he said. "It is your
wedding-gift that I am fashioning; but you must be content to wait its
completion before you see it. By Christmas it shall be your own."

So Kala, comforted with the thought of future possession, bided her
time, and Gabriel was left in undisputed enjoyment of his solitude. At
first he worked languidly and with little zest; but from interest grew
ambition, and from ambition a passionate love for the labor of his
hands, which threw all other hopes and fears into the background. Kala
was forgotten, and Gabriel, absorbed in the contemplation of his art and
striving as he had never striven before, felt as though some power not
his own were working in him, and that the supreme effort of his life had
come. Yet ever in the midst of his feverish activity a strange weakness
seized and held him powerless in its grasp; and like a keen and sudden
pain came the bitter thought that he might die before his work was done.
Instinctively he felt that his hopes of future fame rested on these few
weeks that were flying pitilessly by, each one carrying with it some
portion of his wasted strength; and that if death should overtake him
with his labor uncompleted his name and memory must perish from the
world. So, like one who flies across a Russian steppe pursued by
starving wolves, Gabriel sped on his task, seeking to out-distance the
grim and noiseless wolf that followed close upon his track.

It was Christmas eve, the anniversary of that snowy night when Peter
Burkgmäier had carried home the deformed child, and now all was bustle
and glad preparation in the stone-mason's household. Within three days
Kala was to be married, and Lisbeth, who felt that her reputation as
cook and housewife was at stake, spared neither time nor trouble in her
hospitable labors. Since early morning the great fires had roared in her
spacious kitchen, and all the poor who came to beg a Christmas bounty
tasted freely of her good cheer. With light heart and busy fingers Kala
assisted her mother, and doled out the bread and cakes--not too
lavishly--to the ragged children who clamored around the door; wondering
much in the meanwhile what trinket Sigmund would bring her with which to
deck herself on Christmas morning.

And in his little room Gabriel stood looking at his finished work, and
asking himself if his heart spoke truly when it whispered: "You, too,
are great." It was sweet to realize that his task was done and that he
might rest at last; it was sweeter still to see in the bit of carved
wood before him the fulfilment of all his dearest dreams. So, while
daylight faded into dusk and evening into night, he sat lost in a maze
of tangled thoughts that crowded wearily through his listless brain. It
was now too dark for him to discern the image by his side, but from time
to time he laid his hand upon it with a gentle touch, as a mother might
caress a sleeping child, and was happy in its dumb companionship.

How long he had been sitting thus he never knew, when suddenly out into
the frosty air rang the great bells of St. Lorenz, calling the faithful
to midnight Mass.

Clearly and joyfully they pealed, as if their brazen tongues were
striving to utter in words their messages of good-will to men. Gabriel's
heart leaped at the sound, and a great yearning seized him to kneel once
more within those beloved walls, and amid their solemn beauty to adore
the new-born Babe. Jubilantly rang the bells, and their glad voices
seemed to speak to him as old friends, and with one accord to urge him
on. Weak and dizzy, he crept down the narrow stairs and out into the
bitter night. The sharp wind struck him in the face, and worried him as
it had worried years before the baby abandoned to its cruel embraces.
Yet with the appealing music of the bells ringing in his ears he never
thought of turning back, but struggled bravely onward until the frowning
walls of St. Lorenz rose up before him. Through the open doors poured a
little crowd of devotees, and Gabriel, entering, stole softly up to the
Sacrament House, where so often the carved Christ had looked with gentle
eyes upon his lonely childhood.

Mass had begun, and the great church was hardly a third full, for
Nuremberg's weakening faith exempted her children from such untimely
services. But in the faces of the scattered worshippers there was
something never seen before--a grave severity, a solemn purpose, as when
men are banded together to resist in silence an advancing foe. Gabriel,
dimly conscious of this, strove to restrain his wandering thoughts, and
fixed his eyes upon the gleaming altar. But no prayer rose to his lips,
though into his heart came that deep sense of rest and contentment which
found an utterance long ago in the words of an apostle: "Lord, it is
good for us to be here." Like a child he had come to his Father's feet,
and, laying there his rejected human love, his ungratified human
ambition, he gained in their place the peace which passeth all
understanding. The two shadows which had mocked him during life vanished
into nothingness at the hour of death, and with clear eyes he saw the
value of an immortal soul.

Mass was over, and the congregation moved slowly through the shadowy
aisles out into the starlit night. But Gabriel sat still, his head
resting against the stone pillar, his dead eyes fixed upon the Sacrament
House, and upon the sculptured Christ rising triumphant from the grave.

Four weeks had gone by since the body of the humpback had been carried
sorrowfully past the stations of the Seilersgasse into the quiet
churchyard beyond. The dusk of a winter evening shrouded the empty
streets when a stranger, of grave demeanor and in the prime of life,
knocked at the stone-mason's door. Kala opened it, and her father,
recognizing the visitor, rose with wondering respect to greet him. It
was Veit Stoss, the wood-carver, then at the zenith of his fame. With
quick, keen eyes he glanced around the homely room, taking in every
detail of the scene before him--Lisbeth weaving placidly by the fire;
Kala fair and blushing in the lamp-light; and Sigmund playing idly with
the crooked little turnspit at his feet. Then he turned to Peter, and
for a minute the two men stood looking furtively at one another, as
though each were trying to read his companion's thoughts. Finally, the
wood-carver spoke.

"I grieve, Master Burkgmäier," he said, with courteous sympathy, "that
you should have lost your foster-son, to whom report says you were much
attached. And I hear also that the young man promised highly in his
calling."

"Then you heard not all," answered the stone-mason, slowly. "Gabriel did
more, for he fulfilled his promise."

A sudden light came into the artist's eyes. "It is true, then," he said,
eagerly, "that the boy left behind him a rare piece of work, which has
not yet been seen outside these walls. I heard the rumor, but thought it
idle folly."

Peter Burkgmäier crossed the room and opened a deep cupboard. "You shall
see it," he said simply, "and answer for yourself. No one in Nuremberg
is more fit to judge." Then, lifting out something wrapped in a heavy
cloth, he carried it to the table, unveiled it with a reverent hand,
and, stepping back, waited in silence for a verdict.

There was a long, breathless pause, broken only by the low whir of
Lisbeth's busy wheel. Veit Stoss stood motionless, while Peter's eyes
never stirred from the table before them. There, carved in the fair
white wood, rested the divine Babe, as on that blessed Christmas night
when his Mother "wrapped him up in swaddling-clothes and laid him in a
manger." The lovely little head nestled on its rough pillow as though on
Mary's bosom; the tiny limbs were relaxed in sleep; the whole figure
breathed at once the dignity of the Godhead and the pathetic
helplessness of babyhood. Instinctively one loved, and pitied, and
adored. Nor was this all. Every broken bit of straw that thrust its
graceful, fuzzy head from between the rough bars of the manger, every
twisted knot of grass, every gnarl and break in the wood itself, had
been wrought with the tender accuracy of the true artist, who finds
nothing too simple for his utmost care and skill.

Veit Stoss drew a heavy breath and turned to his companion. "It is a
masterpiece," he said, gravely, "which I should be proud to call my own.
I congratulate you on the possession of so great a treasure."

"It is not mine," returned the artisan, "but my daughter's. Gabriel
wrought it for her wedding-gift."

The wood-carver's keen blue eyes scanned Kala's pretty, stolid face,
and then wandered to Sigmund's broad shoulders and mighty bulk. A faint,
derisive smile curled his well-cut lips. "Your daughter's beauty merits,
indeed, the rarest of all rare tokens," he said, slowly. "But perhaps
there are other things more needful to a young housewife than even this
precious bit of carving. If she will part with it I will pay her seventy
thalers, and it shall lie in St. Sebald's Church near my own Virgin,
that all may see its loveliness and remember the hand that fashioned
it."

Seventy thalers! Sigmund dropped the dog and lifted his handsome head
with a look of blank bewilderment. Seventy thalers for a bit of wood
like that, when his own strong arms could not earn as much in months! He
stared at the little image in wondering perplexity, as though striving
to see by what mysterious process it had arrived at such a value; while
into his heart crept a thought strictly in keeping with his practical
nature. If the humpback could have produced work worth so much, what a
thousand pities he should die with only one piece finished!

On Lisbeth, too, a revelation seemed to have fallen. Her wheel had
stopped, and in her mind she was rapidly running over a list of
household goods valued at seventy thalers. It was a mental calculation
quickly and cleverly accomplished; for Lisbeth was not slow in all
things, and years of thrift had taught her the full worth of money.
Instinctively she glanced at her husband and marvelled at his unmoved
face.

"Your offer is a liberal one, Master Stoss," said Peter, gravely. "And I
rejoice to think that the poor lad's genius will be recognized. In him
Nuremberg would have had another famous son."

"In him Nuremberg has now a famous son," corrected Veit Stoss, laying
his hand upon the statue. "No other proof of greatness can be needed."
With gentle care he replaced the cloth and lifted the precious burden in
his arms, when suddenly Kala sprang forward, her cheeks ablaze, her blue
eyes dark with anger. Transfigured for one instant into a new and
passionate beauty, she snatched the image from his hands.

"It is mine!" she cried, fiercely; "mine! Gabriel loved me, and carved
it for me when he knew that he was dying. It was for me he did it, and
you shall not take it from me."

She gathered it to her bosom with a low, broken cry, and darted from the
room. God only knows what late love, and pity, and remorse were working
in her breast. Veit Stoss turned softly to her father. "It is enough,"
he said. "Your daughter has the prior right, and I came not here to
wrong her."

And so the hand which had robbed Gabriel of love and life robbed him of
fame. For the statue which should have given joy to generations remained
unknown in the artisan's family. At first many came to see and wonder at
its beauty; but with the advent of a colder creed men wanted not such
tokens of a vanished fervor, and the little Christ-Child was soon
forgotten by the world. Perhaps Kala's sturdy grandchildren destroyed it
as a useless toy; perhaps it perished by fire, or flood, or evil
accident. No memory of it lingers in the streets of Nuremberg; and
Gabriel, lifted beyond the everlasting hills, knoweth the vanity of all
human wishes.

    _The Italian Guest's Selection._

    "He is a Tuscan born, of an old
    noble race in that part of Italy."

    _Hawthorne._

A PICTURE OF THE NATIVITY BY FRA FILIPPO LIPPI

AS EXPLAINED BY A PIOUS FLORENTINE GOSSIP OF HIS DAY.

"Now, I cannot affirm that things did really take place in this manner,
but it greatly pleases me to think that they did."--FRA DOMENICO
CAVALCA: _Life of the Magdalen_.

The silly folks do not at all understand about the birth of our Lord.
They say that our Lord was born at Bethlehem, and because the inns were
all full, owing to certain feasts kept by those Jews, in a stable. But I
tell you this is an error, and due to little sense, for our Lord was
indeed placed in a manger, because none of the hostleries would receive
Joseph and the Blessed Virgin; but it took place differently.

For you must know that beyond Bethlehem, which is a big village walled
and moated, of those parts, lies a hilly country, exceeding wild, and
covered with dense woods of firs, pines, larches, beeches, and similar
trees, which the people of Bethlehem cut down at times, going in bands,
and burn to charcoal, packing it on mules, to sell in the valley; or tie
together whole trunks such as serve for beams, rafters, and masts, and
float them down the rivers, which are many and very rapid.

In these mountains, then, in the thickest part of the woods, a certain
man, of the wood-cutting trade, bethought him to build a house wherein
to store the timber and live, himself and his family, when so it pleased
him, and keep his beasts; and for this purpose he employed certain
pillars and pieces of masonry that stood in the forest, being remains of
a temple of the heathen, the which had long ceased to exist. And he
cleared the wood round about, leaving only tree stumps and bushes; and
close by in a ravine, between high fir-trees, ran a river, always full
to the brim even in midsummer, owing to the melting snows, and of
greenish waters, cold and rapid exceedingly; and around, up hill and
down dale, stretched the wood of firs, larches, pines, and other noble
and useful trees, emitting a very pleasant and virtuous fragrance. The
man thought to enjoy his house, and came with his family, and servants,
and horses, and mules, and oxen, which he had employed to carry down the
timber and charcoal.

[Illustration: A Hilly country]

But scarcely were they settled than an earthquake rent the place,
tearing wall from wall and pillar from pillar, and a voice was heard in
the air, crying, "Ecce domus domini dei." Whereupon they fled,
astonished and in terror, and returned into the town.

And no one of that man's family ventured henceforth to return to that
wood, or to that house, save one called Hilarion, a poor lad and a
servant, but of upright heart and faith in the Lord, which offered to go
back and take his abode there, and cut down the trees and burn the
charcoal for his master.

So he went, being a poor lad and poorly clad in leathern tunic and
coarse serge hood. And Hilarion took with him an ox and an ass to load
with charcoal and drive down to Bethlehem to his master.

And the first night that Hilarion slept in that house, which was fallen
to ruin, only a piece of roof remaining, which he thatched with
pine-branches, he heard voices singing in the air, as of children, both
boys and maidens. But he closed his eyes and repeated a Paternoster, and
turned over and slept. And again, another night, he heard voices, and
knew the house to be haunted, and trembled. But, being clear of heart,
he said two Aves and went to sleep. And once more did he hear voices,
and they were passing sweet; and with them came a fragrance as of
crushed herbs, and many kinds of flowers, and frankincense, and
orris-root; and Hilarion shook, for he feared lest it be the heathen
gods, Mercury, or Macomet, or Apollinis. But he said his prayer and
slept.

But at length, one night, as Hilarion heard those songs as usual, he
opened his eyes. And, behold! the place was light, and a great staircase
of light, like golden cobwebs, stretched up to heaven, and there were
angels going about in numbers, coming and going, with locks like
honeycomb, and dresses pink, and green, and sky-blue, and white, thickly
embroidered with purest pearls, and wings as of butterflies and
peacock's tails, with glories of solid gold about their head. And they
went to and fro, carrying garlands and strewing flowers, so that,
although mid-winter, it was like a garden in June, so sweet of roses,
and lilies, and gillyflowers. And the angels sang; and when they had
finished their work, they said, "It is well," and departed, holding
hands and flying into the sky above the fir-trees.

And Hilarion wondered greatly, and said five Paters and six Aves. And
the next day, as he was cutting a fir-tree in the wood, there met him,
among the rocks, a man old, venerable, with a long gray beard and a
solemn air. And he was clad in crimson, and under his arm he carried
written books and a scourge. And Hilarion said,--

"Who art thou? for this forest is haunted by spirits, and I would know
whether thou be of them or of men."

And the ancient made answer: "My name is Hieronymus. I am a wise man and
a king. I have spent all my days learning the secrets of things. I know
how the trees grow and waters run, and where treasure lies; and I can
teach thee what the stars sing, and in what manner the ruby and emerald
are smelted in the bowels of the earth; and I can chain the winds and
stop the sun, for I am wise above all men. But I seek one wiser than
myself, and go through the woods in search of him, my master."

And Hilarion said: "Tarry thou here, and thou shalt see, if I mistake
not, him whom thou seekest."

So the old man, whose name was Hieronymus, tarried in the forest and
built himself a hut of stones.

And the day after that, as Hilarion went forth to catch fish in the
river, he met on the bank a lady, beautiful beyond compare, the which
for all clothing wore only her own hair, golden and exceeding long. And
Hilarion asked,--

"Who art thou? for this forest is haunted by spirits, and I would know
whether thou art one of such, and of evil intent, as the demon Venus, or
a woman like the mother who bore me."

And the lady answered: "My name is Magdalen. I am a princess and a
courtesan, and the fairest woman that ever be. All day the princes and
kings of the earth have brought gifts to my house, and hung wreaths on
my roof, and strewed flowers in my yard; and the poets all day have sung
to their lutes, and all have lain groaning at my gates at night; for I
am beautiful beyond all creatures. But I seek one more beautiful than
myself, and go searching my master by the lakes and the rivers."

And Hilarion made answer: "Tarry thou here, and thou shalt see, if I
mistake not, him whom thou seekest?"

And the lady, whose name was Magdalen, tarried by the river and built
herself a cabin of reeds and leaves. And that night was the longest and
coldest of the winter.

And Hilarion made for himself a bed of fern and hay in the stable of the
ox and the ass, and lay close to them for warmth. And, lo! in the middle
of the night the ass brayed and the ox bellowed, and Hilarion started
up.

And he saw the heavens open with a great brightness as of beaten and
fretted gold, and angels coming and going, and holding each other by
the hand, and wreathed in roses, and singing "Gloria in Excelsis Deo, et
in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis."

And Hilarion wondered and said ten Paters and ten Aves.

And that day, towards noon, there came through the wood one bearing a
staff, and leading a mule, on which was seated a woman, that was near
unto her hour and moaning piteously. And they were poor folk and
travel-stained.

And the man said to Hilarion: "My name is Joseph. I am a carpenter from
the city of Nazareth, and my wife is called Mary, and she is in travail.
Suffer thou us to rest, and my wife to lie on the straw of the stable."

And Hilarion said: "You are welcome. Benedictus qui venit in nomine
domini;" and Hilarion laid down more fern and hay, and gave provender to
the mule. And the woman's hour came, and she was delivered of a male
child. And Hilarion took it and laid it in the manger. And he went forth
into the woods and found the ancient wizard Hieronymus, and the lady
Magdalen, and said,--

"Come with me to the ruined house, for truly there is He whom you be
seeking."

And they followed him to the ruined house where the fir-trees were
cleared above the river; and they saw the babe lying in the manger, and
Hieronymus and Magdalen kneeled down, saying, "Surely this is He that is
our Master, for He is wiser and more fair than either."

And the skies opened, and there came forth angels, such as Hilarion had
seen, with glories of solid gold round their heads, and garlands of
roses about their necks, and they took hands and danced, and sang,
flying up, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo."

    _By The Stay-At-Home Traveller._

    "He prepares to read by wiping
    his spectacles, carefully adjusting
    them on his eyes, and drawing
    the candle close to him--is
    very particular in having his
    slippers ready for him at the
    fire."

    _Hunt._

MELCHIOR'S DREAM.

"Well, father, I don't believe the Browns are a bit better off than we
are; and yet, when I spent the day with young Brown, we cooked all sorts
of messes in the afternoon; and he wasted twice as much rum and brandy
and lemons in his trash as I should want to make good punch of. He was
quite surprised, too, when I told him that our mince-pies were kept shut
up in the larder, and only brought out at meal-times, and then just one
apiece; he said they had mince-pies always going, and he got one
whenever he liked. Old Brown never blows up about that sort of thing; he
likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the holidays, particularly at
Christmas."

The speaker was a boy--if I may be allowed to use the word in speaking
of an individual whose jackets had for some time past been resigned to a
younger member of his family, and who daily, in the privacy of his own
apartment, examined his soft cheeks by the aid of his sisters'
"back-hair glass." He was a handsome boy, too; tall, and like
David--"ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and his face, though clouded
then, bore the expression of general amiability. He was the eldest son
in a large young family, and was being educated at one of the best
public schools. He did not, it must be confessed, think either small
beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and beans that his
family thought of him, I think it was pale ale and kidney-beans at
least.

When the lords of the creation of all ages can find nothing else to do,
they generally take to eating and drinking; and so it came to pass that
our hero had set his mind upon brewing a jorum of punch, and sipping it
with an accompaniment of mince-pies; and Paterfamilias had not been
quietly settled to his writing for half an hour, when he was disturbed
by an application for the necessary ingredients. These he had refused,
quietly explaining that he could not afford to waste his French brandy,
etc., in school-boy cookery, and ending with, "You see the reason, my
dear boy?"

To which the dear boy replied as above, and concluded with the
disrespectful (not to say ungrateful) hint, "Old Brown never blows up
about that sort of thing; he likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the
holidays."

Whereupon Paterfamilias made answer, in the mildly deprecating tone in
which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy
days:--

"That's quite a different case. Don't you see, my boy, that Adolphus
Brown is an only son, and you have nine brothers and sisters? If you
have punch and mince-meat to play with, there is no reason why Tom
should not have it, and James, and Edward, and William, and Benjamin,
and Jack. And then there are your sisters. Twice the amount of the
Browns' mince-meat would not serve you. The Christmas bills, too, are
very heavy, and I have a great many calls on my purse; and you must be
reasonable. Don't you see?"

"Well, father----" began the boy; but his father interrupted him. He
knew the unvarying beginning of a long grumble, and dreading the
argument, cut it short.

"I have decided. You must amuse yourself some other way. And just
remember that young Brown's is quite another case. He is an only son."

Whereupon Paterfamilias went off to his study and his sermon; and his
son, like the Princess in Andersen's story of the swineherd, was left
outside to sing,--

    _"O dearest Augustine,
    All's clean gone away!"_

Not that he did say that--that was the princess's song--what he said
was,--

"_I wish I were an only son!_"

This was rather a vain wish, for round the dining-room fire (where he
soon joined them) were gathered his nine brothers and sisters, who, to
say the truth, were not looking much more lively and cheerful than he.
And yet (of all days in the year on which to be doleful and
dissatisfied!) this was Christmas Eve.

Now I know that the idea of dulness or discomfort at Christmas is a very
improper one, particularly in a story. We all know how every little boy
in a story-book spends the Christmas holidays. First, there is the large
hamper of good things sent by grandpapa, which is as inexhaustible as
Fortunatus's purse, and contains everything, from a Norfolk turkey to
grapes from the grandpaternal vinery. There is the friend who gives a
guinea to each member of the family, and sees who will spend it best.
There are the godpapas and godmammas, who might almost be fairy sponsors
from the number of expensive gifts that they bring upon the scene. The
uncles and aunts are also liberal.

One night is devoted to a magic-lantern (which has a perfect focus),
another to the pantomime, a third to a celebrated conjurer, a fourth to
a Christmas tree and juvenile ball.

The happy youth makes himself sufficiently ill with plum-pudding, to
testify to the reader how good it was, and how much there was of it; but
recovers in time to fall a victim to the negus and trifle at supper for
the same reason. He is neither fatigued with late hours, nor surfeited
with sweets; or if he is, we do not hear of it.

But as this is a strictly candid history, I will at once confess the
truth, on behalf of my hero and his brothers and sisters. They had spent
the morning in decorating the old church, in pricking holly about the
house, and in making a mistletoe bush. Then in the afternoon they had
tasted the Christmas soup, and seen it given out; they had put a
finishing touch to the snowman by crowning him with holly, and had
dragged the yule-logs home from the carpenter's. And now, the early tea
being over, Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow;
his friend was shut up in his room; and Materfamilias was in hers, with
one of those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep
away. So the ten children were left to amuse themselves, and they found
it rather a difficult matter.

"Here's a nice Christmas!" said our hero. He had turned his youngest
brother out of the arm-chair, and was now lying in it with his legs
over the side. "Here's a nice Christmas! A fellow might just as well be
at school. I wonder what Adolphus Brown would think of being cooped up
with a lot of children like this! It's his party to-night, and he's to
have champagne and ices. I wish I were an only son."

"Thank you," said a chorus of voices from the floor. They were all
sprawling about on the hearth-rug, pushing and struggling like so many
kittens in a sack, and every now and then with a grumbled
remonstrance:--

"Don't, Jack! you're treading on me."

"You needn't take all the fire, Tom."

"Keep your legs to yourself, Benjamin."

"It wasn't I," etc., with occasionally the feebler cry of a small
sister,--

"Oh! you boys are so rough."

"And what are you girls, I wonder?" inquired the proprietor of the
arm-chair, with cutting irony. "Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish there
were no such things as brothers and sisters!"

"You _wish_ WHAT?" said a voice from the shadow by the door, as deep and
impressive as that of the ghost in Hamlet.

The ten sprang up; but when the figure came into the firelight, they saw
that it was no ghost, but Paterfamilias's old college friend, who spent
most of his time abroad, and who, having no home or relatives of his
own, had come to spend Christmas at his friend's vicarage. "You wish
_what_?" he repeated.

"Well, brothers and sisters are a bore," was the reply. "One or two
would be all very well; but just look, here are ten of us; and it just
spoils everything. Whatever one does, the rest must do; whatever there
is, the rest must share; whereas, if a fellow was an only son, he would
have the whole--and by all the rules of arithmetic, one is better than a
tenth."

"And by the same rules, ten is better than one," said the friend.

"Sold again!" sang out Master Jack from the floor, and went head over
heels against the fender.

His brother boxed his ears with great promptitude; and went on--"Well, I
don't care; confess, sir; isn't it rather a nuisance?"

Paterfamilias's friend looked very grave, and said quietly, "I don't
think I am able to judge. I never had brother or sister but one, and he
was drowned at sea. Whatever I have had, I have had the whole of, and
would have given it away willingly for some one to give it to. I
remember that I got a lot of sticks at last, and cut heads and faces to
all of them, and carved names on their sides, and called them my
brothers and sisters. If you want to know what I thought a nice number
for a fellow to have, I can only say that I remember carving
twenty-five. I used to stick them in the ground and talk to them. I have
been only, and lonely, and alone, all my life, and have never felt the
nuisance you speak of."

"I know what would be very nice," insinuated one of the sisters.

"What?"

"If you wouldn't mind telling us a very short story till supper-time."

"Well, what sort of a story is it to be?"

"Any sort," said Richard; "only not too true, if you please. I don't
like stories like tracts. There was an usher at a school I was at, and
he used to read tracts about good boys and bad boys to the fellows on
Sunday afternoon. He always took out the real names, and put in the
names of the fellows instead. Those who had done well in the week, he
put in as good ones, and those who hadn't as the bad. He didn't like me,
and I was always put in as a bad boy, and I came to so many untimely
ends, I got sick of it. I was hanged twice, and transported once for
sheep stealing; I committed suicide one week, and broke into the bank
the next; I ruined three families, became a hopeless drunkard, and broke
the hearts of my twelve distinct parents. I used to beg him to let me
be reformed next week; but he said he never would till I did my Cæsar
better. So, if you please, we'll have a story that can't be true."

"Very well," said the friend, laughing; "but if it isn't true, may I put
you in? All the best writers, you know, draw their characters from their
friends, nowadays. May I put you in?"

"Oh, certainly!" said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire,
putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which
seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly favored.

The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more modest
but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of thought,
Paterfamilias's friend commenced the story of

MELCHIOR'S DREAM.

"Melchior is my hero. He was--well, he considered himself a young man,
so we will consider him so too. He was not perfect; but in these days
the taste in heroes is for a good deal of imperfection, not to say
wickedness. He was not an only son. On the contrary, he had a great many
brothers and sisters, and found them quite as objectionable as my friend
Richard does."

"I smell a moral," murmured the said Richard.

"Your scent must be keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long way
off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one particular
night, when the house being full of company, it was decided that the
boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it; that is, all in one
large room."

"Thank goodness we have not come to that!" said the incorrigible
Richard; but he was reduced to order by threats of being turned out, and
contented himself with burning the soles of his boots against the bars
of the grate in silence: and the friend continued:

"But this was not the worst. Not only was he, Melchior, to sleep in the
same room with his brothers, but his bed being the longest and largest,
his youngest brother was to sleep at the other end of it--foot to foot.
True, by this means he got another pillow, for of course that little
Hop-o'-my-thumb could do without one, and so he took his; but in spite
of this, he determined that, sooner than submit to such an indignity, he
would sit up all night. Accordingly, when all the rest were fast asleep,
Melchior, with his boots off and his waistcoat easily unbuttoned, sat
over the fire in the long lumber-room, which served that night as
'barracks'. He had refused to eat any supper down-stairs to mark his
displeasure, and now repaid himself by a stolen meal according to his
own taste. He had got a pork-pie, a little bread and cheese, some large
onions to roast, a couple of raw apples, an orange, and papers of soda
and tartaric acid to compound effervescing draughts. When these dainties
were finished, he proceeded to warm some beer in a pan, with ginger,
spice, and sugar, and then lay back in his chair and sipped it slowly,
gazing before him, and thinking over his misfortunes.

"The night wore on, the fire got lower and lower; and still Melchior
sat, with his eyes fixed on a dirty old print, that had hung above the
mantel-piece for years, sipping his 'brew,' which was fast getting cold.
The print represented an old man in a light costume, with a scythe in
one hand, and an hour-glass in the other; and underneath the picture in
flourishing capitals was the word TIME.

"'You're a nice old beggar,' said Melchior, dreamily. 'You look like an
old haymaker, who has come to work in his shirt-sleeves, and forgotten
the rest of his clothes. Time! time you went to the tailor's, I think.'

"This was very irreverent: but Melchior was not in a respectful mood;
and as for the old man, he was as calm as any philosopher.

"The night wore on, and the fire got lower and lower, and at last went
out altogether.

"'How stupid of me not to have mended it! said Melchior; but he had not
mended it, and so there was nothing for it but to go to bed; and to bed
he went accordingly.

"'But I won't go to sleep,' he said; 'no, no; I shall keep awake, and
to-morrow they shall know that I have had a bad night.'

"So he lay in bed with his eyes wide open, and staring still at the old
print, which he could see from his bed by the light of the candle, which
he had left alight on the mantel-piece to keep him awake. The flame
waved up and down, for the room was draughty; and, as the lights and
shadows passed over the old man's face, Melchior almost fancied that it
nodded to him, so he nodded back again; and as that tired him he shut
his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again there was no
longer any doubt--the old man's head was moving; and not only his head,
but his legs, and his whole body. Finally, he put his feet out of the
frame, and prepared to step right over the mantel-piece, candle, and
all.

"'Take care,' Melchior tried to say, 'you'll set fire to your shirt.' But
he could not utter a sound; and the old man arrived safely on the floor,
where he seemed to grow larger and larger, till he was fully the size of
a man, but still with the same scythe and hour-glass, and the same airy
costume. Then he came across the room, and sat down by Melchior's
bedside.

"'Who are you?' said Melchior, feeling rather creepy.

"'TIME,' said his visitor, in a deep voice, which sounded as if it came
from a distance.

"'Oh, to be sure, yes! In copper plate capitals.'

"'What's in copper-plate capitals?' inquired Time.

"'Your name, under the print.'

"'Very likely,' said Time.

"Melchior felt more and more uneasy. 'You must be very cold,' he said.
'Perhaps you would feel warmer if you went back into the picture.'

"'Not at all.' said Time; 'I have come on purpose to see you.'

"'I have not the pleasure of knowing you,' said Melchior, trying to keep
his teeth from chattering.

"'There are not many people who have a personal acquaintance with me,'
said his visitor. 'You have an advantage,--I am your godfather.'

"'Indeed,' said Melchior; 'I never heard of it.'

"'Yes,' said his visitor; 'and you will find it a great advantage.'

"'Would you like to put on my coat?' said Melchior, trying to be civil.

"'No, thank you,' was the answer. 'You will want it yourself. We must be
driving soon.'

"'Driving!' said Melchior.

"'Yes,' was the answer: 'all the world is driving; and you must drive;
and here come your brothers and sisters.'

"Melchior sat up; and there they were, sure enough, all dressed, and
climbing one after the other on to the bed--_his_ bed!

"There was that little minx of a sister with her curls. There was that
clever brother, with his untidy hair and bent shoulders, who was just as
bad the other way, and was forever moping and reading. There was that
little Hop-o'-my-thumb, as lively as any of them, a young monkey, the
worst of all; who was always in mischief, and consorting with the low
boys in the village. There was the second brother, who was Melchior's
chief companion, and against whom he had no particular quarrel. And
there was the little pale lame sister, whom he dearly loved; but whom,
odd to say, he never tried to improve at all. There were others who were
all tiresome in their respective ways; and one after the other they
climbed up.

"'What are you doing, getting on to my bed?' inquired the indignant
brother, as soon as he could speak.

"'Don't you know the difference between a bed and a coach, godson?' said
Time, sharply.

"Melchior was about to retort, but, on looking round, he saw that they
were really in a large sort of coach with very wide windows. 'I thought
I was in bed,' he muttered. 'What can I have been dreaming of?'

"'What, indeed!' said the godfather. 'But be quick, and sit close, for
you have all to get in; you are all brothers and sisters.'

"'Must families be together?' inquired Melchior, dolefully.

"'Yes, at first,' was the answer; 'they get separated in time. In fact,
every one has to cease driving sooner or later. I drop them on the road
at different stages, according to my orders,' and he showed a bundle of
papers in his hands; 'but as I favor you, I will tell you in confidence
that I have to drop all your brothers and sisters before you. There, you
four oldest sit on this side, you five others there, and the little one
must stand or be nursed.'

"'Ugh!' said Melchior, 'the coach would be well enough if one was alone;
but what a squeeze with all these brats! I say, go pretty quick, will
you?'

"'I will,' said Time, 'if you wish it. But beware that you cannot change
your mind. If I go quicker for your sake, I shall never go slow again;
if slower, I shall not again go quick; and I only favor you so far,
because you are my godson. Here, take the check-string; when you want
me, pull it, and speak through the tube. Now we're off.'

"Whereupon the old man mounted the box, and took the reins. He had no
whip; but when he wanted to start, he shook the hour-glass, and off they
went. Then Melchior saw that the road where they were driving was very
broad, and so filled with vehicles of all kinds that he could not see
the hedges. The noise and crowd and dust were very great; and to
Melchior all seemed delightfully exciting. There was every sort of
conveyance, from the grandest coach to the humblest donkey-cart; and
they seemed to have enough to do to escape being run over. Among all the
gay people there were many whom he knew; and a very nice thing it seemed
to be to drive among all the grandees, and to show his handsome face at
the window, and bow and smile to his acquaintance. Then it appeared to
be the fashion to wrap one's self in a tiger-skin rug, and to look at
life through an opera-glass, and old Time had kindly put one of each
into the coach.

"But here again Melchior was much troubled by his brothers and sisters.
Just at the moment when he was wishing to look most fashionable and
elegant, one or other of them would pull away the rug, or drop the
glass, or quarrel, or romp, or do something that spoiled the effect. In
fact, one and all, they 'just spoilt everything;' and the more he
scolded, the worse they became. The 'minx' shook her curls, and flirted
through the window with a handsome but ill-tempered looking man on a
fine horse, who praised her 'golden locks,' as he called them; and oddly
enough, when Melchior said that the man was a lout, and that the locks
in question were corkscrewy carrot shavings, she only seemed to like the
man and his compliments the more. Meanwhile, the untidy brother pored
over his book, or if he came to the window, it was only to ridicule the
fine ladies and gentlemen, so Melchior sent him to Coventry. Then
Hop-o'-my-thumb had taken to make signs and exchange jokes with some
disreputable-looking youths in a dog-cart; and when his brother would
have put him to 'sit still like a gentleman' at the bottom of the coach,
he seemed positively to prefer his low companions; and the rest were
little better.

"Poor Melchior! Surely there never was a clearer case of a young
gentleman's comfort destroyed solely by other people's perverse
determination to be happy in their own way instead of in his.

"At last he lost patience, and pulling the check-string, bade Godfather
Time drive as fast as he could.

"Godfather Time frowned, but shook his glass all the same, and away they
went at a famous pace. All at once they came to a stop.

"'Now for it,' said Melchior; 'here goes one at any rate.'

"Time called out the name of the second brother over his shoulder; and
the boy stood up, and bade his brothers and sisters good-bye.

"'It is time that I began to push my way in the world,' said he, and
passed out of the coach and in among the crowd.

"'You have taken the only quiet boy,' said Melchior to the godfather,
angrily. 'Drive fast, now, for pity's sake; and let us get rid of the
tiresome ones.'

"And fast enough they drove, and dropped first one and then the other;
but the sisters, and the reading boy, and the youngest still remained.

"'What are you looking at?' said Melchior to the lame sister.

"'At a strange figure in the crowd,' she answered.

"'I see nothing,' said Melchior. But on looking again after a while, he
did see a figure wrapped in a cloak, gliding in and out among the
people, unnoticed, if not unseen.

"'Who is it?' Melchior asked of the godfather.

"'A friend of mine,' Time answered. 'His name is Death.'

"Melchior shuddered, more especially as the figure had now come up to
the coach, and put its hand in through the window, on which, to his
horror, the lame sister laid hers and smiled. At this moment the coach
stopped.

"'What are you doing?' shrieked Melchior. 'Drive on! drive on!'

"But even while he sprang up to seize the check-string the door had
opened, the pale sister's face had dropped upon the shoulder of the
figure in the cloak, and he had carried her away; and Melchior stormed
and raved in vain.

"'To take her, and to leave the rest! Cruel! cruel!'

"In his rage and grief, he hardly knew it when the untidy brother was
called, and putting his book under his arm, slipped out of the coach
without looking to the right or left. Presently the coach stopped again;
and when Melchior looked up the door was open, and at it was the fine
man on the fine horse, who was lifting the sister on to the saddle
before him. 'What fool's game are you playing?' said Melchior, angrily.
'I know that man. He is both ill-tempered and a bad character.'

"'You never told her so before,' muttered young Hop-o'-my-thumb.

"'Hold your tongue,' said Melchior. 'I forbade her to talk to him, which
was enough.'

"'I don't want to leave you; but he cares for me, and you don't,' sobbed
the sister; and she was carried away.

"When she had gone, the youngest brother slid down from his corner and
came up to Melchior.

"'We are alone now, brother,' he said; 'let us be good friends. May I
sit on the front seat with you, and have half the rug? I will be very
good and polite, and will have nothing more to do with those fellows, if
you will talk to me.'

"Now Melchior really rather liked the idea; but as his brother seemed to
be in a submissive mood, he thought he would take the opportunity of
giving him a good lecture, and would then graciously relent and forgive.
So he began by asking him if he thought that he was fit company for him
(Melchior), what he thought that gentlefolks would say to a boy who had
been playing with such youths as young Hop-o'-my-thumb had, and whether
the said youths were not scoundrels? And when the boy refused to say
that they were, (for they had been kind to him,) Melchior said that his
tastes were evidently as bad as ever, and even hinted at the old
transportation threat. This was too much; the boy went angrily back to
his window corner, and Melchior--like too many of us!--lost the
opportunity of making peace for the sake of wagging his own tongue.

"'But he will come round in a few minutes,' he thought. A few minutes
passed, however, and there was no sign. A few minutes more, and there
was a noise, a shout; Melchior looked up, and saw that the boy had
jumped through the open window into the road, and had been picked up by
the men in the dog-cart, and was gone.

"And so at last my hero was alone. At first he enjoyed it very much. But
though every one allowed him to be the finest young fellow on the road,
yet nobody seemed to care for the fact as much as he did; they talked,
and complimented, and stared at him, but he got tired of it. Sometimes
he saw the youngest brother, looking each time more wild and reckless;
and sometimes the sister, looking more and more miserable; but he saw no
one else.

"At last there was a stir among the people, and all heads were turned
towards the distance, as if looking for something. Melchior asked what
it was, and was told that the people were looking for a man, the hero of
many battles, who had won honor for himself and for his country in
foreign lands, and who was coming home. Everybody stood up and gazed,
Melchior with them. Then the crowd parted, and the hero came on. No one
asked whether he were handsome or genteel, whether he kept good company,
or wore a tiger-skin rug, or looked through an opera-glass? They knew
what he had _done_, and it was enough.

"He was a bronzed, hairy man, with one sleeve empty, and a breast
covered with stars; but in his face, brown with sun and wind, overgrown
with hair, and scarred with wounds, Melchior saw his second brother!
There was no doubt of it. And the brother himself, though he bowed
kindly in answer to the greetings showered on him, was gazing anxiously
for the old coach, where he used to ride and be so uncomfortable, in
that time to which he now looked back as the happiest of his life.

"'I thank you, gentlemen. I am indebted to you, gentlemen. I have been
away long. I am going home.'

"'Of course he is!' shouted Melchior, waving his arms widely with pride
and joy. 'He is coming home; to this coach, where he was--oh, it seems
but an hour ago; Time goes so fast. We were great friends when we were
young together. My brother and I, ladies and gentlemen, the hero and
I--my brother--the hero with the stars upon his breast--he is coming
home!'

"Alas! what avail stars and ribbons on a breast where the life-blood is
trickling slowly from a little wound? The crowd looked anxious; the hero
came on, but more slowly, with his dim eyes straining for the old coach;
and Melchior stood with his arms held out in silent agony. But just when
he was beginning to hope, and the brothers seemed about to meet, a
figure passed between--a figure in a cloak.

"'I have seen you many times, friend, face to face,' said the hero; 'but
now I would fain have waited for a little while.'

"'To enjoy his well-earned honors,' murmured the crowd.

"'Nay,' he said, 'not that; but to see my home, and my brothers and
sisters. But if it may not be, friend Death, I am ready, and tired,
too.' With that he held out his hand, and Death lifted up the hero of
many battles like a child, and carried him away, stars, and ribbons, and
all.

"'Cruel Death!' cried Melchior; 'was there no one else in all this
crowd, that you must take him?'

"His friends condoled with him; but they soon went on their own ways;
and the hero seemed to be forgotten; and Melchior, who had lost all
pleasure in the old bowings and chattings, sat idly gazing out of the
window, to see if he could see any one for whom he cared. At last, in a
grave dark man, who was sitting on a horse, and making a speech to the
crowd, he recognized his clever untidy brother.

"'What is that man talking about?' he asked of some one near him.

"'That man!' was the answer. 'Don't you know? He is _the_ man of the
time. He is a philosopher. Everybody goes to hear him. He has found out
that--well--that everything is a mistake.'

"'Has he corrected it?' said Melchior.

"'You had better hear for yourself,' said the man. 'Listen.'

"Melchior listened, and a cold, clear voice rang upon his ear, saying,--

"'The world of fools will go on as they have ever done; but to the wise
few, to whom I address myself, I would say, Shake off at once and
forever the fancies and feelings, the creeds and customs that shackle
you, and be true. We have come to a time when wise men will not be led
blindfold in the footsteps of their predecessors, but will tear away the
bandage, and see for themselves. I have torn away mine, and looked.
There is no Faith--it is shaken to its rotten foundation; there is no
Hope--it is disappointed every day; there is no Love at all. There is
nothing for any man or for each, but his fate; and he is happiest and
wisest who can meet it most unmoved.'

"'It is a lie!' shouted Melchior. 'I feel it to be so in my heart. A
wicked, foolish lie! Oh! was it to teach such evil folly as this that
you left home and us, my brother? Oh, come back! come back!'

"The philosopher turned his head coldly, and smiled. 'I thank the
gentleman who spoke,' he said, still in the same cold voice, 'for his
bad opinion, and for his good wishes. I think the gentleman spoke of
home and kindred. My experience of life has led me to find that home is
most valued when it is left, and kindred most dear when they are parted.
I have happily freed myself from such inconsistencies. I am glad to know
that fate can tear me from no place that I care for more than the next
where it shall deposit me, nor take away any friends that I value more
than those it leaves. I recommend a similar self-emancipation to the
gentleman who did me the honor of speaking.'

"With this the philosopher went his way, and the crowd followed him.

"'There is a separation more bitter than death,' said Melchior.

"At last he pulled the check-string, and called to Godfather Time in an
humble, entreating voice.

"'It is not your fault,' he began; 'it is not your fault, godfather; but
this drive has been altogether wrong. Let us turn back and begin again.
Let us all get in afresh and begin again.'

"'But what a squeeze with all the brats!' said Godfather Time,
ironically.

"'We should be so happy,' murmured Melchior, humbly; 'and it is very
cold and chilly; we should keep each other warm.'

"'You have the tiger-skin rug and the opera-glass, you know,' said Time.

"'Ah, do not speak of me!" cried Melchior, earnestly. 'I am thinking of
them. There is plenty of room; the little one can sit on my knee; and we
shall be so happy. The truth is, godfather, that I have been wrong. I
have gone the wrong way to work. A little more love, and kindness, and
forbearance might have kept my sisters with us, might have led the
little one to better tastes and pleasures, and have taught the other by
experience the truth of the faith and hope and love which he now
reviles. Oh, I have sinned! I have sinned! Let us turn back, Godfather
Time, and begin again. And oh! drive very slowly, for partings come
only too soon.'

"'I am sorry,' said the old man in the same bitter tone as before, 'to
disappoint your rather unreasonable wishes. What you say is admirably
true, with this misfortune, that your good intentions are too late. Like
the rest of the world, you are ready to seize the opportunity when it is
past. You should have been kind _then_. You should have advised _then_.
You should have yielded _then_. You should have loved your brothers and
sisters while you had them. It is too late now.'

"With this he drove on, and spoke no more, and poor Melchior stared
sadly out of the window. As he was gazing at the crowd, he suddenly saw
the dog-cart, in which were his brother and his wretched companions. Oh,
how old and worn he looked! and how ragged his clothes were! The men
seemed to be trying to persuade him to do something that he did not
like, and they began to quarrel; but in the midst of the dispute he
turned his head, and caught sight of the old coach; and Melchior, seeing
this, waved his hands, and beckoned with all his might. The brother
seemed doubtful; but Melchior waved harder, and (was it fancy?) Time
seemed to go slower. The brother made up his mind; he turned and jumped
from the dog-cart as he had jumped from the old coach long ago, and,
ducking in and out among the horses and carriages, ran for his life. The
men came after him; but he ran like the wind--pant, pant, nearer,
nearer; at last the coach was reached, and Melchior seized the prodigal
by his rags and dragged him in.

"'Oh, thank God, I have got you safe, my brother!'

"But what a brother! with wasted body and sunken eyes; with the old
curly hair turned to matted locks, that clung faster to his face than
the rags did to his trembling limbs; what a sight for the opera-glasses
of the crowd! Yet poor Hop-o'-my-thumb was on the front seat at last,
with Melchior kneeling at his feet, and fondly stroking the head that
rested against him.

"'Has powder come into fashion, brother?' he said. 'Your hair is
streaked with white.'

"'If it has,' said the other, laughing, 'your barber is better than
mine, Melchior, for your head is as white as snow.'

"'Is it possible? are we so old? has Time gone so very fast? But what
are you staring at through the window? I shall be jealous of that crowd,
brother.'

"'I am not looking at the crowd,' said the prodigal in a low voice; 'but
I see----'

"'You see what?' said Melchior.

"'A figure in a cloak, gliding in and out----'

"Melchior sprang up in horror. 'No! no!' he cried, hoarsely. 'No! surely
no!'

"Surely yes! Too surely the well-known figure came on; and the
prodigal's sunken eyes looked more sunken still as he gazed. As for
Melchior, he neither spoke nor moved, but stood in a silent agony,
terrible to see. All at once a thought seemed to strike him; he seized
his brother, and pushed him to the farthest corner of the seat, and then
planted himself firmly at the door, just as Death came up and put his
hand into the coach. Then he spoke in a low, steady voice, more piteous
than cries or tears.

"'I humbly beseech you, good Death, if you must take one of us, to take
me. I have had a long drive, and many comforts and blessings, and am
willing, if unworthy, to go. He has suffered much, and had no pleasure;
leave him for a little to enjoy the drive in peace, just for a very
little; he has suffered so much, and I have been so much to blame; let
me go instead of him.'

"Poor Melchior! In vain he laid both his hands in Death's outstretched
palm; they fell to him again as if they had passed through air; he was
pushed aside--Death passed into the coach--'one was taken and the other
left.'

"As the cloaked figure glided in and out among the crowd, many turned
to look at his sad burden, though few heeded him. Much was said; but the
general voice of the crowd was this: 'Ah! he is gone, is he? Well! a
born rascal! It must be a great relief to his brother!' A conclusion
which was about as wise, and about as near the truth, as the world's
conclusions generally are. As for Melchior, he neither saw the figure
nor heard the crowd, for he had fallen senseless among the cushions.

"When he came to his senses, he found himself lying still upon his face;
and so bitter was his loneliness and grief, that he lay still and did
not move. He was astonished, however, by the (as it seemed to him)
unusual silence. The noise of the carriage had been deafening, and now
there was not a sound. Was he deaf? or had the crowd gone? He opened his
eyes. Was he blind? or had the night come? He sat right up, and shook
himself, and looked again. The crowd was gone; so, for matter of that,
was the coach; and so was Godfather Time. He had not been lying among
cushions, but among pillows; he was not in any vehicle of any kind, but
in bed. The room was dark, and very still; but through the 'barracks'
window, which had no blind, he saw the winter sun pushing through the
mist, like a red-hot cannon-ball hanging in the frosty trees; and in
the yard outside, the cocks were crowing.

"There was no longer any doubt that he was safe in his old home; but
where were his brothers and sisters? With a beating heart he crept to
the other end of the bed; and there lay the prodigal, with no haggard
cheeks or sunken eyes, no gray locks or miserable rags, but a rosy,
yellow-haired urchin fast asleep, with his head upon his arm. 'I took
his pillow,' muttered Melchior, self-reproachfully.

"A few minutes later, young Hop-o'-my-thumb, (whom Melchior dared not
lose sight of for fear he should melt away,) seated comfortably on his
brother's back, and wrapped up in a blanket, was making a tour of the
'barracks.'

"'It's an awful lark,' said he, shivering with a mixture of cold and
delight.

"If not exactly a _lark_, it was a very happy tour to Melchior, as, hope
gradually changing into certainty, he recognized his brothers in one
shapeless lump after the other in the little beds. There they all were,
sleeping peacefully in a happy home, from the embryo hero to the embryo
philosopher, who lay with the invariable book upon his pillow, and his
hair looking (as it always did) as if he lived in a high wind.

"'I say,' whispered Melchior, pointing to him, 'what did he say the
other day about being a parson?'

"'He said he should like to be one,' returned Hop-o'-my-thumb; 'but you
said he would frighten away the congregation with his looks.'

"'He will make a capital parson,' said Melchior, hastily, 'and I shall
tell him so to-morrow. And when I'm the squire here, he shall be vicar,
and I'll subscribe to all his dodges without a grumble. I'm the eldest
son. And I say, don't you think we could brush his hair for him in a
morning, till he learns to do it himself?'

"'Oh, I will!' was the lively answer; 'I'm an awful dab at brushing.
Look how I brush your best hat!'

"'True,' said Melchior. 'Where are the girls to-night?'

"'In the little room at the end of the long passage,' said Hop
o'-my-thumb, trembling with increased chilliness and enjoyment. 'But
you're never going there! we shall wake the company, and they will all
come out to see what's the matter.'

"'I shouldn't care if they did,' said Melchior, 'it would make it feel
more real.'

"As he did not understand this sentiment, Hop-o'-my-thumb said nothing,
but held on very tightly; and they crept softly down the cold gray
passage in the dawn. The girls' door was open; for the girls were
afraid of robbers, and left their bed-room door wide open at night, as a
natural and obvious means of self-defence. The girls slept together; and
the frill of the pale sister's prim little night-cap was buried in the
other one's uncovered curls.