he meant to go down there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagining how the old man would wring his hands, with a "Holloa! 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 school-master'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 not 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 his soul-lit eyes there are warm tears, and on his worn face a sad and solemn joy. CHAPTER XI. 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 paint; you will find colours enough in your own house and heart.