ur or two later he knew that the good people
there would have gone to bed and that he had no longer the option of
going. He did not go to bed himself. He had not had enough exercise that
day to make him sleepy; and then, too, he thought he would sit up and
see the old year out. He had an indistinct idea that it was rather a
virtuous thing to do, rather more pious than sleeping the night through
just as if it were any other night. He put his much-handled, oft-read
books down before him on the table, and set himself to passing the
evening with them. Midnight is actually midnight when the sun goes down
before five o'clock and there is no artificial interest for the after
hours.

Most men have more religion at heart, latent or developed, than can be
seen by others. When they have not, when what shows is as much as what
is--God pity them!

Alec Trenholme was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his
private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the
religion of him very visible. Nevertheless, this evening his books,
which had become not less but more to him because he had read them
often, palled upon his taste. When he was a boy his father had taught
him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had
been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time
went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this
consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the
light, as it were, of two candles--the one, of expediency; the other, of
rectitude. Had he been wise? Had he been good?

Not being of a contemplative or egotistical disposition, he soon
fidgeted. Thinking he heard a sound outside, which might be wind rising,
or might be the distant approach of the iron snow-plough, he got up to
look out. The small panes of his window were so obscured by frostwork
that he did not attempt to look through the glass, but opened his door.
Far or near there was no sign of rising wind or coming engine; only,
above, the glowing stars, with now and then a shaft of northern light
passing majestically beneath them, and, below, the great white world,
dim, but clearly seen as it reflected the light. The constellations
attracted his attention. There hung Orion, there the Pleiades, there
those mists of starlight which tell us of space and time of which we
cannot conceive. Standing, looking upwards, he suddenly believed himself
to be in the neighbourhood of