this bewildering maze of doubts and
fears shall be made plain in the light of God's love.

A certain wistful look in Piers' eyes made Joyce think he would like to
talk to her alone.

So, when the evening shadows were closing over the waters of the Severn,
and the blue mountains fading into obscurity, and the white-winged
seagulls sought their nests, Joyce asked her brother to come out with
her, for it was more like midsummer than Christmas.

Joyce put her arm on her brother's shoulder as of old, and they went
together to the churchyard, where the old grey tower of the church stood
out solemnly against the after-glow in the west, where a planet
shimmered in the opal depths.

"The old year is dying with a smile upon its face," Piers said. "It is
hard to believe we are in midwinter."

"Very hard," Joyce replied; "and it is a time when, though my present is
so happy and so brimful of thanksgiving, the past comes back, and will
not be forgotten."

"I am glad you don't forget the dear old days," Piers said.

"Forget! oh! no; the sadness of the past does not shadow my happy
present, but it chastens it. I always think of dear father when I stand
here, and poor merry, happy Bunny, swept into that surging sea."

"Yes," Piers said, sighing; "the strong are taken and the weakly ones
left. Harry is, I suppose, half way round the world again in the
'Persis.' There is Ralph working hard and enduring a good deal at the
old home, while I----"

"You are not unhappy, dear?" Joyce asked, anxiously.

"No," he said; but the "No" was not heartily said. "After all, we think
too much of ourselves and all our little concerns. Why, Joyce, what are
we and this earth we live in, when compared to that great universe of
which these stars, as they come out one by one, seem to bring a nightly
message? What are we, to think so much of ourselves? and what are life,
and death, and troubles, and joys, and petty disappointments? They are
nothing--lighter than dust in the balance."

"They are something to God," Joyce said, reverently. "He has told us so.
Dearest Piers, you are not losing that Faith which we used to call our
staff in the dear old days."

Piers was silent for a moment.

"Joyce," he said, at last, "I like to talk to you sometimes. I sit and
read in my den, and go out and in of the sitting room and see how mother
is getting on, and my brain gets full of cobwebs and I am impatient, and
long to spring up into a better and nobler li