Christmas Eve of 188-, with all its soft, fleecy snow, its merry sleigh bells, its decorations, its plenty and its poverty, its rejoicings and its wailings, its hopes and its fears--the day of huge, warm fires and smouldering faggots, of sumptuous dinners and scanty crusts, the night of all others, that the satisfied thanksgiving of the rich, and the heart-rending craving of the pauper, meet at the throne of God. At noon of this bright, merry Christmas Eve, among the many passengers on board the mid-day train that rushed into the Union Depot, was one who interests us more than all the business fathers, school girls, or college students, or other absent members of Ottawa families, returning to spend Christmas with their friends. He is a young, good-looking man, in a long sealskin coat and cap. As the bell ceases its clanging on reaching the platform, he seems to pull his cap down purposely, and otherwise to gather himself into the plushy depths of his warm furs, he hires the first cabman that accosts him, shoves in his heavy valise, which is all the baggage he has, and in a gruff sort of voice, orders to be driven to the "Albion Hotel." There is nothing surprising in it at all, the gentleman certainly looks like a "Russell House" patronizer, but then the "Albion" is quiet and secluded, and perhaps this gentleman prefers it to the endless noises of greater hotels. The gratified cabman, happy over his hasty bargain, which delivered him from a half hour's stamping of feet and clapping of his fur covered hands, never cares to wonder whether the occupant of his sleigh is a disguised swindler or an Earl _in-cog_, but jingles his sleigh bells hurriedly in the direction of Nicholas street. Christmas Eve, with a pale, clear moon, shining placidly down on the still, white features of nature; the tall, bare boughs, sprinkled with the afternoon's flakes, are showing out brightly in the silver light of the Christmas moon, great soft feathery masses of white clouds chase fair Luna through the deep ethereal blue of the heaven's vault. From every respectable direction in the city, sleighs are speeding merrily along with their dainty bundles of woollen wraps and tucked-up skirts. Prim young gentlemen, in their shiny swallow-tails, with their creaseless white cravats and little scarlet buds in their buttonholes, work their way into top coats and fur jackets, and dropping their latch-keys into their breast pockets, start off, all going in the same direction, towards the grand dwelling on Sandy Hill, that everyone knows to be Henry Rayne's.