t listening to Sonia's attempts at comfort, Natacha slipped
into bed, and, long after the lights were out, she lay motionless but
awake, her eyes fixed on the moonshine that came dimly through the
frost-embroidered windows.

_A Wayfarer's Fancy._

"A felicitous combination of the German, the Sclave, and the
Semite, with grand features, brown hair floating in artistic
fashion, and brown eyes in spectacles."

_George Eliot._

TWO CHRISTMASES.

I.

It was the time of the great war. Germany was desolated. Towns and
villages were destroyed by flames. Order and law had given way to savage
power; and from the walls of many a ruined house of God the wooden image
of the Saviour looked down with a face of anguish on the horrors of the
degenerate times.

The terrified citizens of towns that were still untouched by war, hid
themselves within their narrow walls, awaiting, in tremulous fear, the
day on which their homes must also fall a prey to plundering soldiers.
If any one were obliged to go beyond the boundaries, he would glance
anxiously at the bushes on either side of the road; and when night came
on, he would be forced to look with horror and sorrow at the reddened
horizon, where a little village or lonely hamlet was burning to ashes.

But who is it cowers there in the ditch by the highway? A dried-up
little man with deathly-pale countenance, and clad in a black coat!
Flee, Wanderer! let him not gaze at you with his piercing gray eyes!
Beware! for that old man is the Plague-man!

The heart of the Wanderer sinks within him. Horrified he rushes away,
and thanks heaven when, in the gray of the morning, he sees again the
towers of his native town. Enraptured by the sight of home he believes
these towers with the dear, well-known faces can protect him; but the
old cripple has been quicker than he. Before break of day he has knocked
at the town-gate, and the gate-keeper, on opening it, has scarcely
looked into his gray eyes before he sank down as though some one had
felled him with an axe.

Then the gray old man begins his terrible work. Like a bat he slips into
all dwellings; no gate and no bolt is an obstacle to him. Right up into
the lofts he climbs and opens the most secret chamber. That threshold he
passes is doomed to the Black-death.

* * * * *

It had happened thus to a little town in Franconia, where but a few
houses remained untouched by the terr