When the two were gone, it was a still spot that afternoon with the sunlight on the grass. As the sun began to descend, its rays gradually left the earth and passed upward toward the pinnacles of the pines; and lingering on those summits awhile, it finally took its flight back to the infinite. Twilight fell gray; darkness began to brood; objects lost their outlines. The trees of the enclosure became shadows; these shadows in time became as other realities. The sturdy young evergreen planted beside the boy as his forest counterpart, having his shape and size, now stood there as the lad himself wrapped in his overcoat--the crimson-tipped madcap little fellow who had gambolled across the frozen fields that windy morning toward his Christmas Festival. In this valley of earth he stood there holding upright for all to see the slab on which was to be read his brief ended tale:-- "=Unto a Land Not Inhabited.=" THE END The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S The Bride of the Mistletoe To which _The Doctor's Christmas Eve_ is a sequel, was described at the time of its publication as "_so exquisite that not a few of his admirers will hold it the best work he has accomplished_." "It stands out in the midst of the year's fiction, and perhaps the fiction of many years, as a thing by itself. There is the spirit of Maeterlinck in these pages blended with the spirit of Hawthorne."--_Current Literature._ The English press was enthusiastic, the London _Academy_ declaring it "worth very many ordinary novels"; "conceived in a fine vision and developed with beauty"; "exercising over us a strong and at times a weird fascination." The _Literary World_ sums up: "We may assure the author's innumerable readers and friends that in his latest book he has lost none of the charm that first won them." "Exquisite in form, full of color, finely finished."--_Record-Herald_, Chicago. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Sixty-four and Sixty-six Fifth Avenue, New York MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S Novels The Choir Invisible _This can also be had in a special edition illustrated by Orson Lowell_ _$2.50_