"I sail to-morrow," it said, "and am glad of it on more accounts than one. It is a long overland journey from my home to this port, and I did not know until I got here that a strange and fatal epidemic is wont to make its appearance in the town about this time of year. During the last few days it has broken out with great virulence, and people are dying all around me. It kills in a few hours, and gives no warning, save a passing chill. Well, I have no fears; I have passed unharmed through a hundred pestilences. Still, if I should fail to sit by your fireside next Christmas Eve, do not blame my will." "Dear old Mort!" Psyche murmured, tears standing in her eyes. "What if he had died, just as he was on his way to meet us after all these years! I won't tell Eros; no, not even if it makes him angry. It's better he should be angry than anxious. If anyone is to be anxious, let me be so. Only if Mort doesn't come on Christmas Eve, then Eros must know. But he will come, I know; and we shall all be happy." It lacked scarcely three days to Christmas, and the house had to be arranged and decorated for the festivities. It was a house of a thousand to hold merrymakings in, and seemed really to take a genial interest in the preparations that were going forward, and to give it all the assistance that was in its power. Gray and weatherbeaten without, within it was warm and home-like. Square oaken beams divided the low ceilings of the rambling rooms; the deep fireplaces were dusky with the smoke of ten thousand fires; the mellow old kitchen was a world in itself; and the shadowy bed-chambers, with their great four-post bedsteads, were just the place to play hide-and-seek in with ghosts and goblins. Moreover, the best of feelings prevailed between the venerable mansion and the natural and elemental surroundings amidst which it had so long existed. The forest grouped itself artistically in the background; the hillside sloped lovingly towards it on the right; at a little distance, a clear-eyed pond smiled placid goodwill. And the rough spirits of Wind and Rain, Snow and Frost, seemed to grow soft and tractable in their sports with this time-honoured structure. "Merry Christmas!" they whispered, wept, and glistened; and the house glowed back a hearty response out of its diamond-paned lattices, and its clustered chimney breathed forth smoky satisfaction.