ples, and gazing wildly into the
wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of those
dear hands stretching out towards me.

* * * * *

That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life. That
is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith says my
luck turned on that summer's night, when I was struggling in the water
to save all that was worth living for. A month later there was a stone
bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood on it and looked up at
the moonlit Castle, as we had done once before, and as we have done many
times since. For all those things happened ten years ago last summer,
and this is the tenth Christmas Eve we have spent together by the
roaring logs in the old hall, talking of old times; and every year there
are more old times to talk of. There are curly-headed boys, too, with
red-gold hair and dark-brown eyes like their mother's, and a little
Margaret, with solemn black eyes like mine. Why could not she look like
her mother, too, as well as the rest of them?

The world is very bright at this glorious Christmas time, and perhaps
there is little use in calling up the sadness of long ago, unless it be
to make the jolly firelight seem more cheerful, the good wife's face
look gladder, and to give the children's laughter a merrier ring, by
contrast with all that is gone. Perhaps, too, some sad-faced, listless,
melancholy youth, who feels that the world is very hollow, and that life
is like a perpetual funeral service, just as I used to feel myself, may
take courage from my example, and having found the woman of his heart,
ask her to marry him after half an hour's acquaintance. But, on the
whole, I would not advise any man to marry, for the simple reason that
no man will ever find a wife like mine, and being obliged to go further,
he will necessarily fare worse. My wife has done miracles, but I will
not assert that any other woman is able to follow her example.

Margaret always said that the old place was beautiful, and that I ought
to be proud of it. I daresay she is right. She has even more imagination
than I. But I have a good answer and a plain one, which is this--that
all the beauty of the Castle comes from her. She has breathed upon it
all, as the children blow upon the cold glass window-panes in winter;
and as their warm breath crystallises into landscape