What sound is that? A ringing of bells. It wakens Rudolph. He gazes about the room. On a stand in the corner a lamp is dimly burning. Some one is sitting here beside the bed. “Oh, go away, good sir, and leave me in peace!” he moans piteously. “Did I not offer thee all the gold in my purse? Why, then, dost thou trouble me? Do no murder, I beseech thee, for I am old and feeble, and I have not slept before in a hundred years.” “Thou art dreaming, Rudolph. There is nothing to fear.” “Thou, my father!” and he seizes the two toil-hardened hands, covering them with kisses and with tears. “How camest thou here? I feared I should never behold thy face again! And where are my mother and my brother?” “The dear mother and our little Karl will see thee in the morning to wish thee a ‘Happy New Year.’” A Happy New Year! Rudolph puts his hand to his forehead, as if to smooth out some knot there underneath. “Truly, I do not know,” he murmurs, “it all seemed so real. Have I been dreaming, dear father?” And then the father explains how he heard wailing and shrieking in the night, and came to learn the cause, but, fearing a fever, staid to watch awhile. “It is hard, dear father, that after thou hast been working all the day thou must needs watch all the night.” “I would do much more than that for Rudolph, although he is ‘only the son of a carpenter.’” “Alas, that I talked in my sleep!” Hark, the bells! once more they clang together—all the bells in the town. So it is, so it is the New Year! They are ringing in the New Year. And these New-Year days—standing like mile-stones all along the highway of Time—who gave them to the world for holidays? Was it not “the carpenter’s son”? Rudolph, trying to smooth out the kink in his brain, finds that thought entangled with it, somehow. After awhile he exclaims, with face aglow: “It is good that this is the first day of the year! That is the grand time to turn over a new leaf—no, to put on a new suit of armor! For I have learned something from my dream, father; it is this—thou art a Hero. And I mean to be another, just like thee!” And the father looks down into Rudolph’s eyes, and sees that the demon has departed. QUEEN MABEL. “Green, green are the meadows, And blue, blue is the sky, And glad, glad is the morning, And happy and gay am I. Tirra-la-la, la, la, la! And happy and gay am I. “White, white are the daisies Blossoming everywhere, And red, red are the roses, And sweet, sweet is the air! “And sweet is the burnie’s music, And the music of bee and bird— Ha, ha! the sweetest music That ever and ever you heard! “Gold, golden the sunbeams, And bright, bright is the day, And the bees, and the birds, and Mabel, Little of care have they! “Oh! and over the meadows, Oh! and under the sky, And all in the dewy morning, Happy and gay am I! Tirra-la-la, la, la, la! Happy and gay am I!”