h to the end "The Song of
Angus to the Stars." As the last, high, confident note died, he put his
pipes down hastily, and dropped his face in his hands with a broken murmur
of Gaelic lament.

When he looked abroad again, the valley was like a great opal, where the
moon shot its rays into the transparent fog far below him. The road was
white and the shadows black and one was no more devoid of mystery than the
other.

The sky for all its stars hung above the valley like an empty bowl above
an empty vessel, and in his heart he felt no swelling possibilities to
fill this void. To the haggard old eyes the face of the world was like a
dead thing, which did not return his gaze even with hostility, but
blankly--a smooth, thin mask which hid behind it nothing at all.

He was startled by the sudden appearance of a dog from out of the shadows,
a shaggy collie who trotted briskly down the road, stopping to roll a
friendly, inquiring eye on his bent figure. His eyes followed the animal
until it vanished in the shadows on the other side. After the sound of its
padding footsteps was still, the old man's heart died within him at the
silence.

He tried vainly to exorcise this anguish by naming it What was it? Why did
he droop dully now that he was where he had so longed to be? Everything
was as it had been, the valley, the clean white fog, tossing its waves up
to him as he had dreamed of it in the arid days of Nebraska; the mountains
closing in on him with the line of drooping peace he had never lost from
before his eyes during the long, dreary years of exile. Only he was
changed. His eye fell on his mud-caked boots, and his face contracted.
"Oh, my! Oh, my!" he said aloud, like an anxious old child. "She couldn't
ha' liked my tracking bog durt on to her clane kitchen floor!"

But as he sat brooding, his hand dropped heavily to the Round Stone and
encountered a small object which he held up to view. It was a willow
whistle of curious construction, with white lines criss-cross on it; and
beside it lay a jackknife with a broken blade. The old man looked at it,
absently at first, then with a start, and finally with a rush of joyful
and exultant exclamations.

And afterward, quite tranquilly, with a shining face of peace, he played
softly on his pipes, "The Call of the Sidhe to the Children."

ADESTE FIDELES!

I.

The persuasive agent sought old Miss Abigail out among her flower-beds and
held up to her a tiny chair with r