Upon the darker midnight sky Of human sorrow, care, and sin-- A night that broods at noontide high; A dreary gloom all hearts within-- There rose a gentle, human face, Whose light was love and sympathy-- The God of heaven, yet of our race-- The humblest of humanity. The night of sorrow, sin, and care Still shadows many hapless hearts; But all who will this light may share,-- This hope which Christmas morn imparts. Lottie's eyes were suffused with tears when the simple hymn was finished, but they did not prevent her from following Miss Kartell's finger as she turned to the title-page and pointed to the inscription: "Music by Alice Martell. "Words by Frank Hemstead. "Dedicated to Miss Lottie Marsden. "We wish you more than a 'merry'--the happy Christmas, rather, of the Christian." Her first response was an impulsive kiss to Alice. But when she looked around to thank Hemstead he had gone. A little later, as he came stamping up the piazza, out of the snow, after assisting Harcourt and Miss Martell away, the hall-door opened, and some one darted out, and took his hand in a quick, thrilling pressure. A voice that had grown as dear as familiar said, "Before we parted to-night I wanted to tell you that I think Lottie Marsden, like Ninon, has become more than a woman,--a Christian." And she vanished, but left the night so luminous about him that he could not, for a long time, enter the house. He felt, like the shepherds who kept watch centuries ago, that an angel had brought him "tidings of great joy." CHAPTER XXXII. THE CHRISTMAS SUNDAY. This Christmas Sabbath, though marked by no unusual event, was destined to be a memorable day in the lives of Frank Hemstead and Charlotte Marsden. A chain of unforeseen circumstances and experiences, and a sequence of emotions still less understood, had lifted them higher and higher, until this culminating day was scarcely one of earthly existence. Lottie, in her previous life, had been frivolous and selfish; but her evil resulted from thoughtlessness, rather than from the deliberate purpose to do wrong. She was the type of multitudes of her fair sisters, who, with sparkling eyes, look out upon life in its morning to see only what it offers to them, and not the tasks it furnishes them for others. Only by experience--only by God's logic of events--do they find that their happiness is in these tasks; in unselfish giving and doing.