! For, as the fire was roaring at its best,
certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of the immensity
above, and peered down doubtfully--with wonder at first, then with
interest, then with recognition, with a start of glad surprise. They
at least knew all about it, they understood. Among them the Name was
a daily familiar word; his story was a part of the music to which they
swung, himself was their fellow and their mate and comrade. So they
peeped, and winked, and peeped again, and called to their laggard
brothers to come quick and see.

*****

The best of life is but intoxication, and Selina, who during her brief
inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our drab existence
affords, had to experience the inevitable bitterness of awakening
sobriety, when the dying down of the flames into sullen embers coincided
with the frenzied entrance of Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so
much that she was at once and forever disrated, broke, sent before the
mast, and branded as one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with
Edward safe at school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an
aunt; that her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church
Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed from her own custody
and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed rather because
she had dragged poor Harold, against his better judgment, into a most
horrible scrape, and moreover because, when the reaction had fairly set
in, when the exaltation had fizzled away and the young-lady portion of
her had crept timorously back to its wonted lodging, she could only see
herself as a plain fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow of an
excuse or explanation.

As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less pitiful than
it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he started upstairs to his
lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him a dreary future of pains and
penalties, sufficient to last to the crack of doom. Outside his door,
however, he tumbled over Augustus the cat, and made capture of him; and
at once his mourning was changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed
his prize into port. For Augustus, who detested above all things going
to bed with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and the trapper
who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved something notable.
Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night's
lodging settled, wisely made the b