slavery of classes, and should be able to start for home with the
friends who had leave to go with him. How slowly the time crept by, and
how he told the other boys of the joys that would await them! And when
it had really gone, and they were free! how delicious it used to be!

As the scene appeared before him Livingstone could almost feel again the
thrill that set him quivering with delight; the boundless joy that
filled his veins as with an elixir.

The arrival at the station drifted before him and the pride of his
introduction of the servants whose faces shone with pleasure; the drive
home through the snow, which used somehow to be warming, not chilling,
in those days; and then, through the growing dusk, the first sight of
the home-light, set, he knew, by the mother in her window as a beacon
shining from the home and mother's heart. Then the last, toilsome climb
up the home-hill and the outpouring of welcome amid cheers and shouts
and laughter.

Oh, the joy of that time! And through all the festivity was felt, like a
sort of pervading warmth, the fact that that day Christ came into the
world and brought peace and good will and cheer to every one.

The boy Livingstone saw was now installed regularly as the bearer of
Christmas presents and good things to the poor, and the pleasure he took
then in his office flashed across Livingstone's mind like a sudden
light. It lit up the faces of many whom Livingstone had not thought of
for years. They were all beaming on him now with a kindliness to which
he had long been a stranger; that kindliness which belongs only to our
memory of our youth.

Was it possible that he could ever have had so many friends! The man in
the chair put his hand to his eyes to try and hold the beautiful vision,
but it faded away, shut out from view by another.

CHAPTER VIII

The vision that came next was of a college student. The Christmas
holidays were come again. They were still as much the event of the year
as when he was a schoolboy. Once more he was on his way home accompanied
by friends whom he had brought to help him enjoy the holidays, his
enjoyment doubled by their enjoyment. Once more, as he touched the soil
of his own neighborhood, from a companion he became a host. Once more
with his friends he reached his old home and was received with that
greeting which he never met with elsewhere. He saw his father and mother
standing on the wide portico before the others with outstretch