“It is about time you two children heard the story straight, for it concerns you both, so I’ll tell you. Your Uncle Harry, Mark, is the man who never came back and won’t. He was just your age at the time. He and Annie were to be married in a few months, then everything went to smash. And it was your mother, Kate, who was the innocent cause of his exile. Harry, who was the best friend I had in the world, tried to put in a good word for me--this was before I and your mother were engaged--and Annie, coming in and finding them, got it all crooked. Instead of waiting until Harry could explain, she flared up, and off he went. Her hair turned white in a week when she found out how she had misjudged him, but it was too late then--Harry wouldn’t come back, and he never will. When he told you, Mark, last year in Rio that he was coming home Christmas I knew he’d change his mind just as soon as you left him, and he did. Queer boy, Harry. Once he gets an idea in his head it sticks there. He was that way when he was a boy. He’ll never come back as long as Annie lives, and that means never.” He stopped a moment, spread his fingers to the blazing logs, and then, with a smile on his face, said: “If ever I catch you two young turtledoves making such fools of yourselves, I’ll turn you both outdoors,” and again his hearty laugh rang through the cheery room. The girl instinctively leaned closer to her lover. She had heard some part of the story before--in fact, both of them had, but never in its entirety. Her heart went out to the Little Gray Lady all the more. Mark now spoke up. He, too, had had an hour of his own with the Little Gray Lady, and the obligation still remained unsettled. “Well, if she won’t come up here and have Christmas with us,” he cried, “why can’t we go down there and have Christmas with her? Let’s surprise her, Kate; let’s clean out all those dead people. I know she sits in the dark and imagines they all come back, for I’ve seen her that way many a time when I drop in on her in the late afternoon. Let’s show her they’re alive.” Kate started up and caught Mark’s arm. “Oh, Mark! I have it!” she whispered, “and we will--yes--that will be the very thing,” and so with more mumblings and mutterings, not one word of which could her father hear, the two raced up-stairs to the top of the house and the garret. IV Two hours later a group of young people led by Mark Dabney trooped out of Kate’s gate and turned down the Little Gray Lady’s street. Most of them wore long cloaks and were muffled in thick veils.