t
well,--calling "Happy Christmas" at every door: he meant to go down
there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagining how the old man would
wring his hands, with a "Holla! you're welcome home, Stephen, boy!" and
Mrs. Howth would bring out the jars of pine-apple preserve which her
sister sent her every year from the West Indies. And then----Never mind
what then. Stephen Holmes was very much in love, and this Christmas-day
had much to bring him. Yet it was with a solemn shadow on his face that
he watched the dawn, showing that he grasped the awful meaning of this
day that "brought love into the world." Through the clear, frosty night
he could hear a low chime of distant bells shiver the air, hurrying
faint and far to tell the glad tidings. He fancied that the dawn flushed
warm to hear the story,--that the very earth should rejoice in its
frozen depths, if it were true. If it were true!--if this passion in his
heart were but a part of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths
the world struggled vainly!--if it were true that this Christ did come
to make that love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the
old schoolmaster's joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in even
poor Lois's thorough content in this day,--for it would be, he knew, a
thrice-happy day to her. A strange story that of the Child coming into
the world,--simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, gray
eyes, how all the fresh morning told it,--it was in the very air;
thinking how its echo stole through the whole world,--how innumerable
children's voices told it in eager laughter,--how even the lowest slave
half-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that
Christ was born. He could hear from the church on the hill that they
were singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to him?
Did he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was born this day?
There is no smile on his face as he listens to the words, "Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men"; it bends
lower,--lower only. But in the selfish eyes there are warm tears, and on
his worn face a sad and solemn joy.

* * * * *

I am going to end my story now, There are phases more vivid in the
commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love as
poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all
crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to pa