he would like most of all to put out his hand and touch her cheek and sleepy smiles, and draw her hair, long and soft and pale, from under the cloak. On the whole, it seemed probable that he might. “Harriet,” he said slowly, “I'm going to play this hand.” “Why, I don't know what you mean.” “Take it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention details, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that kind of a selection, meaning me?” “Oh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.” “And I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.” “I don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!” “Oh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?” “Vagrants?” “Like me.” “Like you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died. But he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not to-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied things. It's the storm. There's no one else now.” A thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and come with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire courageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in the dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the door fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be what they will. Men are not born in a night, or a year. But if David Sebastian were a spectre there at the door, and thought differently on any question, or had more to say, he was not articulate. There is no occupation for ghosts in a stirring world, nor efficiency in their repentance. Has any one more than a measure of hope, and a door against the storm? There was that much, at least, on Edom Hill. SONS OF R. RAND SOME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and a leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thin-soiled hillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the northeast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-travelled highway, as could be seen from its breadth and' dustiness. At about half the length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the hillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some settler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of trees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of Charity as could be found. Another philanthropist had added half a cocoanut-shell to the foundation.