the house. The old man received
him with tears in his eyes, and the children with shouts of joy. The
maiden escaped in the confusion, just in time to save herself from
fainting. We crowded about the lamp to hide her retreat, and nearly put
it out; and the butler could not get it to burn up before she had
glided into her place again, relieved to find the room so dark. The
sailor only had seen her go, and now he sat down beside her, and,
without a word, got hold of her hand in the gloom. When we all
scattered to the walls and the corners, and the lamp blazed up again,
he let her hand go.

"During the rest of the dinner the old man watched the two, and saw
that there was something between them, and was very angry. For he was
an important man in his own estimation, and they had never consulted
him. The fact was, they had never known their own minds till the sailor
had gone upon his last voyage, and had learned each other's only this
moment.--We found out all this by watching them, and then talking
together about it afterwards.--The old gentleman saw, too, that his
favourite, who was under such obligation to him for loving her so much,
loved his son better than him; and he grew by degrees so jealous that
he overshadowed the whole table with his morose looks and short
answers. That kind of shadowing is very different from ours; and the
Christmas dessert grew so gloomy that we Shadows could not bear it, and
were delighted when the ladies rose to go to the drawing-room. The
gentlemen would not stay behind the ladies, even for the sake of the
well-known wine. So the moody host, notwithstanding his hospitality,
was left alone at the table in the great silent room. We followed the
company upstairs to the drawing-room, and thence to the nursery for
snap-dragon; but while they were busy with this most shadowy of games,
nearly all the Shadows crept downstairs again to the dining-room, where
the old man still sat, gnawing the bone of his own selfishness. They
crowded into the room, and by using every kind of expansion--blowing
themselves out like soap-bubbles--they succeeded in heaping up the
whole room with shade upon shade. They clustered thickest about the
fire and the lamp, till at last they almost drowned them in hills of
darkness.

"Before they had accomplished so much, the children, tired with fun and
frolic, had been put to bed. But the little girl of five years old,
with whom we had been so pleased when first we arrived, c