Mr. Pratt rested his hand on the back of a chair. It seemed as though, without some support of that kind, he could not stand. Mr. Pownceby advanced to him. "Mr. Pratt, give me your hand." Mr. Pratt gave it to him, it would seem, mechanically. The two men stood looking at each other in silence--the one almost without a scratch, the other a battered ruin. While they were so engaged the latch of the French window was opened from without, the blind was thrust aside, and a lady entered. It was Mrs. Pratt. When she saw what met her eyes she stared, which, as a breach of good manners, was, under the circumstances, excusable. "Mr. Pownceby! Gilead! What have you been doing?" "I've been whipping him," said Mr. Pratt. "I must be off my ordinary, for I never whipped a man that way before." Mr. Pownceby slipped on his jacket. He helped Mr. Pratt to put on his. "It's my fault, Mrs. Pratt. When I told your husband of our little experiment and that I found myself unable to release you from the hypnotic state which I had induced he thought I must have done you a serious injury, and that he naturally resented." Mrs. Pratt looked at Mr. Pownceby. There was a twinkle of intelligence in her sweet blue eyes. "I see. Miss Haseltine is looking for you. You'll find her in the drawing-room." "Thank you," said Mr. Pownceby. "I--I'll go and look for her." As he sneaked out of the room, with his shirt and waistcoat under his arm, devoutly hoping that no one might encounter him on his journey to his own apartment, he heard Mrs. Pratt make this remark to her husband--the first after two years absence: "So, Gilead, you've been at it again." He heard Mr. Pratt reply: "I have. I was raised fighting, and I reckon that fighting I shall die. If I have to whip that Pownceby again it is a certainty I shall." AN OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS. CHAPTER I. THE PROMISE. "An old-fashioned Christmas.--A lively family will accept a gentleman as paying guest to join them in spending an old-fashioned Christmas in the heart of the country." That was the advertisement. It had its points. I was not sure what, in this case, an old-fashioned Christmas might happen to mean. I imagine there were several kinds of "old-fashioned" Christmases; but it could hardly be worse than a chop in my chambers, or--horror of horrors!--at the club; or my cousin Lucy's notion of what she calls the "festive season." Festive? Yes! She and her husband, who suffers from melancholia, and all the other complaints which flesh is heir to, and I, dragging through what I call a patent-medicine dinner, and talking of everybody who is dead and gone, or else going, and of nothing else.