ng at her and shaking his
golden head.

"Angelina!" said the Angel softly; and Miss Terry trembled to hear her name
thus spoken for the first time in years. "Angelina, you do not want to
believe your own eyes, do you? But I am real; more real than the things you
see every day. You must believe in me. I am the Christmas Angel."

"I know it." Miss Terry's voice was hoarse and unmanageable, as of one in a
nightmare. "I remember."

"You remember!" repeated the Angel. "Yes; you remember the day when you and
Tom hung me on the Christmas tree. You were a sweet little girl then, with
blue eyes and yellow curls. You believed the Christmas story and loved
Santa Claus. Then you were simple and affectionate and generous and
happy."

"Fiddlestick!" Miss Terry tried to say. But the word would not come.

"Now you have lost the old belief and the old love," went on the Angel.
"Now you have studied books and read wise men's sayings. You understand the
higher criticism, and the higher charity, and the higher egoism. You don't
believe in mere giving. You don't believe in the Christmas economics,--you
know better. But are you happy, dear Angelina?"

Again Miss Terry thrilled at the sound of her name so sweetly spoken; but
she answered nothing. The Angel replied for her.

"No, you are not happy because you have cut yourself off from the things
that bring folk together in peace and good-will at this holy time. Where
are your friends? Where is your brother to-night? You are still hard and
unforgiving to Tom. You refused to see him to-day, though he wrote so
boyishly, so humbly and affectionately. You have not tried to make any soul
happy. You don't believe in _me_, the Christmas Spirit."

There is such a word as Fiddlestick, whatever it may mean. But Miss Terry's
mind and tongue were unable to form it.

"The Christmas spirit!" continued the Angel. "What is life worth if one
cannot believe in the Christmas spirit?"

With a powerful effort Miss Terry shook off her nightmare sufficiently to
say, "The Christmas spirit is no real thing. I have proved it to-night. It
is not real. It is a humbug!"

"Not real? A humbug?" repeated the Angel softly. "And you have proved it,
Angelina, this very night?"

Miss Terry nodded.

"I know what you have done," said the Angel. "I know very well. How keen
you were! How clever! You made a test of Chance, to prove your point."

Again Miss Terry nodded with complacency.

"What knowledge of the world