All day long his hands had been baffled of their gift-giving. That was sometimes God’s way, the Bishop knew, as he leaned back in this strange, expectant peace. Suddenly, sharp as paintings torch-lit against a gloom, there passed before him again, as on the black street, those three faces out of his Christmas Day: Mrs. Graham’s, black hate scarcely lighted by love for that little Christmas baby; Newbold’s, storm-tossed upon a struggle that gave no presage of victory; and Lucy’s, seamed with the subtleties of a loneliness that could not see the only help for lonely living. These three faces were, God in his mystery had showed him to-day, only the symbols of his larger failure, in his town, in his diocese. His little garden space hedged in for him out of all the world, he had tended it with much love but with little wisdom. So God would have to take care of it now. Sharp again, just as the three faces had flashed forth out of darkness and passed close against the Bishop’s eyes, came other visions and pictures, those of his Christ-child poem of the morning. Only now it was no sacred city of the Orient, but the dumb and sleeping streets of Westbury where the Child went wandering. As before, he knocked, all eager, and again opening doors flashed ruddy on the night, to close again with a low dull sound. On and on he fled, a glimmering baby-form blown on the winter wind, until the Bishop’s eyes closed wearily from following. He opened them with a twitch of pain, and there without, close against the dark sash the Child was standing, not sad at all, but sweet and smiling. Then instantly this picture, like the others, faded, and again the Bishop knew himself with the familiarity of unnumbered silent nights like this one, seated alone in his study, quiet with the peace of the Friend. Through all the solitary hours of all the solitary years, the Friend had always stood there, clear-figured, by the eastward window. The night was wearing on as the Bishop sat, waiting. Very soon they would be there. He remembered that he had been looking for them all the day. It would be very cosy to have them coming in on Christmas night--his own! But at the chiming of those two words through his brain, thought sharply asserted itself, keen and crystalline in retrospect. As a man brings all his life to God at the end, the Bishop looked into the Nazarene’s eyes from the picture of the little city that belonged to them both, whispering, “But those out there have been my own.” Presently the silvered head sank back in the sudden drowsiness that falls upon the very old, but even as he yielded to it, the Bishop’s eyelids flickered an instant. He looked again toward the Friend, forever clear against the curtained window. He lifted his right hand a little, like a child, not knowing how confident it was. Too tired and sleepy to be conscious of anything at all but that Presence that filled all the room, the Bishop murmured happily, “And I have not been lonely!”