ed arms,
affection and pride beaming in their faces. He witnessed their cordial
greeting of his friends. "Our son's friends are our friends," he heard
them say.

Henry Trelane said afterwards, "Why, Livingstone, you have told me of
your home and your horses, but never told me of your father and mother.
Do you know that they are the best in the world?" Somehow, it had seemed
to open his eyes, and the manner in which his friends had hung on his
father's words had increased his own respect for him. One of them had
said, "Livingstone, I like you, but I love your father." The phrase, he
remembered, had not altogether pleased him, and yet it had not
altogether displeased him either. But Henry Trelane was very near to him
in those days. Not only was he the soul of honor and high-mindedness,
with a mind that reflected truth as an unruffled lake reflects the sky,
but he was the brother of Catherine Trelane, who then stood to
Livingstone for Truth itself.

It was during a Christmas-holiday visit to her brother that Livingstone
had first met Catherine Trelane; as he now saw himself meet her. He had
come on her suddenly in a long avenue. Her arms were full of
holly-boughs; her face was rosy from a victorious tramp through the
snow, rosier at the hoped-for, unexpected, chance meeting with her
brother's guest; a sprig of mistletoe was stuck daringly in her hood,
guarded by her mischievous, laughing eyes. She looked like a dryad fresh
from the winter woods. For years after that Livingstone had never
thought of Christmas without being conscious of a certain radiance that
vision shed upon the time.

The next day in the holly-dressed church she seemed a saint wrapt in
divine adoration.

Another shift of the scene; another Christmas.

Reverses had come. His father, through kindness and generosity, had
become involved beyond his means, and, rather than endure the least
shadow of reproach, gave up everything he possessed to save his name
and shield a friend. Livingstone himself had been called away from
college.

He remembered the sensation of it all. He recalled the picture of his
father as he stood calm and unmoved amid the wreck of his fortune and
faced unflinchingly the hard, dark future. It was an inspiring picture:
the picture of a gentleman, far past the age when men can start afresh
and achieve success, despoiled by another and stripped of all he had in
the world, yet standing upright and tranquil; a just man walking in his