aluted the gay bunting with which his Christmas
arch was draped, where the Union Jack of old England kissed the American
Stars and Stripes.

"I say!" he exclaimed, turning to a tall youth, who had been inspecting
his operations, "that Liverpool train must be beastly late, Dol. Those
fellows ought to be here before this. The Mater will be in a stew. She
ordered dinner at five, as the youngsters dine with us, of course,
to-day, and it's past that now."

"Hush! will you? I'll vow that cab is stopping! Yes! By all that's
splendid, there they are!" and Dol Farrar's joy-whoop rang through the
English oaken hall with scarcely less vehemence than it had rung in
former days through the dim aisles of the Maine forests.

A sound of spinning cab-wheels abruptly stopping, a noise of men's feet
on the steps outside, and the hall-door was flung wide by two pairs of
welcoming hands.

"Cyrus! Royal! Got here at last? Oh! but this is jolly."

"Neal, dear old boy, how goes it? Dol, you're a giant. I wouldn't have
known you."

Such were the most coherent of the greetings which followed, as two
visitors, in travelling rig, their faces reddened by eight days at sea
in midwinter, crossed the threshold.

There could be no difficulty in recognizing Cyrus Garst's well-knit
figure and speculative eyes, though a sprouting beard changed somewhat
the lower part of his face. And if Royal Sinclair's tall shoulders and
brand-new mustache were at all unfamiliar, anybody who had once heard
the click and hum of his hasty tongue would scarcely question his
identity.

The Americans had steamed over the Atlantic amid bluster of elements,
purposing a tour through southern France and Italy. And they were to
take part, before proceeding to the Continent, in the festivities of an
English Christmas at the Farrars' home in Manchester.

"Oh, but this is jolly!" cried Neal again, his voice so thickened by the
joy of welcome that--embryo cavalry man though he was--he could bring
out nothing more forceful than the one boyish exclamation.

Dol's throat was freer. Sinclair and he raised a regular tornado in the
handsome hall. Questions and answers, only half distinguishable, blew
between them, with explosions of laughter, and a thunder of claps on
each other's shoulders. When their gale was at its noisiest, Royal's
part of it abruptly sank to a dead calm, stopped by "an angel unawares."

A girl of sixteen, with hair like the brown and gold of a pheasant's