Stephen Holmes was very much in love, and this Christmas-day had much to bring him.

Yet it was with a solemn shadow on his face that he watched the dawn, showing that he grasped the awful meaning of this day that "brought love into the world." Through the clear, frosty night he could hear a low chime of distant bells shiver the air, hurrying faint and far to tell the glad tidings.

He fancied that the dawn flushed warm to hear the story,--that the very earth should rejoice in its frozen depths, if it were true.

If it were true!--if this passion in his heart were but a part of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths the world struggled vainly!--if it were true that this Christ did come to make that love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the old school-master's joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in even poor Lois's thorough content in this day,--for it would be, he knew, a thrice happy day to her.

A strange story that of the Child coming into the world,--simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, gray eyes, how all the fresh morning told it,--it was in the very air; thinking how its echo stole through the whole world,--how innumerable children's voices told it in eager laughter,--how even the lowest slave half-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that Christ was born.