haven't danced since I
was sixteen--but I love it. The music seems to run through my veins
like quicksilver and I forget everything--everything--except the
delight of keeping time to it. There isn't any floor beneath me, or
walls about me, or roof over me--I'm floating amid the stars."

Captain Jim hung his fiddle up in its place, beside a large frame
enclosing several banknotes.

"Is there anybody else of your acquaintance who can afford to hang his
walls with banknotes for pictures?" he asked. "There's twenty
ten-dollar notes there, not worth the glass over them. They're old
Bank of P. E. Island notes. Had them by me when the bank failed, and
I had 'em framed and hung up, partly as a reminder not to put your
trust in banks, and partly to give me a real luxurious, millionairy
feeling. Hullo, Matey, don't be scared. You can come back now. The
music and revelry is over for tonight. The old year has just another
hour to stay with us. I've seen seventy-six New Years come in over
that gulf yonder, Mistress Blythe."

"You'll see a hundred," said Marshall Elliott.

Captain Jim shook his head.

"No; and I don't want to--at least, I think I don't. Death grows
friendlier as we grow older. Not that one of us really wants to die
though, Marshall. Tennyson spoke truth when he said that. There's old
Mrs. Wallace up at the Glen. She's had heaps of trouble all her life,
poor soul, and she's lost almost everyone she cared about. She's
always saying that she'll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn't
want to sojourn any longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a
sick spell there's a fuss! Doctors from town, and a trained nurse, and
enough medicine to kill a dog. Life may be a vale of tears, all right,
but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon."

They spent the old year's last hour quietly around the fire. A few
minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and opened the door.

"We must let the New Year in," he said.

Outside was a fine blue night. A sparkling ribbon of moonlight
garlanded the gulf. Inside the bar the harbor shone like a pavement of
pearl. They stood before the door and waited--Captain Jim with his
ripe, full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty
middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and
exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of starved years and her
hopeless future. The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace
struck twelve.