from that dread Beyond, she knew, that he
had fancied last night the dead beckoned to him.

She touched him again.

"It is a quiet morning yonder," she said, calmly.

"Yes, Lotty."

"God sent your dream. I hardly hoped, Jerome," her eyes filling with
tears, "that we should keep Christmas together,--you, the baby, and I."

He smiled and pressed her hand, touched the little cheek, and then
looked wistfully out again.

He held the baby God had given to comfort his old age proudly and
tenderly; but his heart would turn to the other child's face that was
watching for him yonder behind the dawn, and listen for the weak little
voice which he knew on that Christmas morning was somewhere
calling,--"Father! father!"

LUCY'S LETTERS.

On a cold January night I returned home after a holiday visit to town.
Snow was just beginning to fall, and a desolate sort of feeling came
over me as the omnibus drove up to my residence. A bright, cheerful
light shone out of the library-windows, and Ernestina, a maid who had
lived with me half a score of years before her marriage, was at the gate
to receive me.

"It is owing to her kind, capable hands that the house looks so
comfortable," I said to myself, with a little sigh; "but what am I to do
when, she returns to her own home?"

Then, with a true spinster selfishness, I wished her good husband and
beautiful boy "better off" in Abraham's bosom, and wondered what could
make women so foolish as to get married. The cause of all this
discomfort was the consciousness of having a new serving-maid. My last
experience in that necessary domestic article had not been an agreeable
one. The woman, though not "as old as Sibyl," was

"as curst and shrewd
As Socrates' Xantippe, or a worse."

She was a dusky Melpomene, who openly insulted the furniture, assaulted
violently the china, and waged universal war against all inanimate
objects. Being a trifle deaf, she used this defect as an excuse for not
hearing any request or command; when spoken to, she glared grimly,
turned her back, and strode off with a tragic _loup_, reminding one of a
Forest in petticoats. I never knew I was an amiable woman, until her
advent into my peaceable establishment.

"Now I return to a new experience, may-be no better than the former," I
thought.

Upon entering the house, I saw through the open kitchen-door--out of
which streamed a savory smell of broiled chicken, buns, and tea--an
encoura