plans for the future, and
ask her--God knows what I would have asked her then! She had forgotten
me,--she had another work to do!"

She wrung her hands with a helpless cry. Holmes went to the window: the
dull waste of snow looked to him as hopeless and vague as his own life.

"I have deserved it," he muttered to himself. "It is too late to amend."

Some light touch thrilled his arm.

"Is it too late, Stephen?" whispered a childish voice.

The strong man trembled, looking at the little dark figure standing near
him.

"We were both wrong; let us be friends again."

She went back unconsciously to the old words of their quarrels long ago.
He drew back.

"Do not mock me," he gasped. "I suffer, Margaret. Do not mock me with
more courtesy."

"I do not; let us be friends again."

She was crying like a penitent child; her face was turned away; love,
pure and deep, was in her eyes.

The red fire-light grew stronger; the clock hushed its noisy ticking to
hear the story. Holmes's pale lip worked: what was this coming to him?
He dared not hope, yet his breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his
veins, his deep eyes flashed fire.

"If my little friend comes to me," he said, in a smothered voice, "there
is but one place for her,--her soul with my soul, her heart on my
heart."--He opened his arms.--"She must rest her head here. My little
friend must be--my wife."

She looked into the strong, haggard face,--a smile crept out on her own,
arch and debonair like that of old time.

"I am tired, Stephen," she whispered, and softly laid her head down on
his breast.

The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room,
about the two figures standing motionless there,--shimmered down into
awe-struck shadow: who heeded it? The old clock ticked away furiously,
as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the
house: nothing else broke the silence. Without, the deep night paused,
gray, impenetrable. Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its
breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas
morn? A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised
joy. Down there in the farm-window two human hearts had given the joy a
name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touching each other beat
in a slow, full chord of love as pure in God's eyes as the song the
angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that is to come.
Forever and ever,--not even de