ather out of which she was manufacturing Christmas
gifts; a pair of great woollen socks, which one of the sisters had told
him privately Lois meant for him, lying on top. As with all of her
people, Christmas was the great day of the year to her. Holmes could
not but smile, looking at them. Poor Lois!--Christmas would be here
soon, then? And sitting by the covered fire, he went back to
Christmases gone, the thought of all others that brought Margret
nearest and warmest to him: since he was a boy they had been together
on that day. With his hand over his eyes, he sat quiet by the fire
until morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call to
another that they would have holiday on Christmas week. It was coming,
he thought, rousing himself,--but never as it had been: that could
never be again. Yet it was strange how this thought of Christmas took
hold of him, after this,--famished his heart. As it approached in the
slow-coming winter, the days growing shorter, and the nights longer and
more solitary, so Margret became more real to him,--not rejected and
lost, but as the wife she might have been, with the simple, passionate
love she gave him once. The thought grew intolerable to him; yet there
was not a homely pleasure of those years gone, when the old
school-master kept high holiday on Christmas, that he did not recall
and linger over with a boyish yearning, now that these things were over
forever. He chafed under his weakness. If the day would but come when
he could go out and conquer his fate, as a man ought to do! On
Christmas eve he would put an end to these torturing taunts, be done
with them, let the sacrifice be what it might. For I fear that even now
Stephen Holmes thought of his own need and his own hunger.

He watched Lois knitting and patching her poor little gifts, with a
vague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter until he
should be free, with his life in his hand again. She left the hospital
at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her go: he fancied the close
air was hurting her, seeing at night the strange shadow growing on her
face. I do not think he ever said to her that he knew all she had done
for him, or thanked her; but no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved
could look into his eyes, and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes,
such as are seen but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would
wish, like Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die