"O, all sad hearts that be,
On land or on the sea,
God's peace with you rest light,
This Christmas night!

"And with the souls that stand

In that dear land

Where pain and all tears cease,
Most perfect peace!"

Faith's tears came thicker; there was a memory that she never dared to turn to, but that started out overpoweringly when the spring was touched: that ghastly morning, three years ago, when a pitiless splendor of December sunshine poured over a new grave -the last of three-and into the upper room where she lay on the floor, and wondered if death or madness would not in mercy break this iron pressure on heart and brain.

They were singing a Christmas hymn now:

66

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning
Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid."

Faith's brain, full of its own thoughts, did not take in the words, or follow their familiar allusion. They only changed subtly the current of her emotion, carried on the memory half an hour later: a quick step at the door of that upper room; a soft rustle; some one kneeling beside her, two arms around her, and a tender voice close to her face.

"My poor Faithie! I came to you as soon as I could. Look up, darling! O, Faithie, don't, please don't feel all alone. I know I don't count for much beside what is gone; but indeed, indeed I can be more to you than you realize now. I can stand between you and utter loneliness. Faithie, Faithie, please let me! After a while you will be glad to have even me."

Ah! she dared not let her memory stay in that time: there were months that were a blackness of horror to look back on. And yet, in all the blackness, there was always that one white figure, shedding a faint light around it.

They had been friends-even affectionate friends before. Each had said of the other, "I love her next after my own people"; but they meant, as girls do, next with a long interval; the "loving" is of a totally different

and lower quality. Since then, the interval had at least shortened greatly to Madge; and to Faith-what had not Madge been to her? It seemed to her that there had been nothing in her life since then but Madge, standing white and benignant, like a single perfect statue in its shrine. Of late, there had been a new feeling-a feeling that made it seem the vital matter in the day's experence whether Mr. Hazen talked with her or with some one else on the boat; a feeling that was sounding a deeper chord than usual! in her sense of desolation, because he had said "Miss Armstrong" to-night, instead of "Miss Faith." But that feeling had no conflict with her love for Madge; indeed, the ache that it gave her to-night quickened her gratitude for Madge's invariableness.

The music changed, the voices that had just joined in an anthem stopped, and Madge's voice rose alone again her own music and Jean Ingelow's words this time: "And deign, O watcher, with the sleepless brow, Pathetic in its yearning-deign reply: Is there, O, is there aught that such as thou Wouldst take from such as I?

"Are there no briers across thy pathway thrust,

Are there no thorns that compass it about?
Nor any stones that thou wilt deign to trust
My hands to gather out?"

It floated through Faith's brain dimly, as a half-comprehended accompaniment to her thoughts.

"O, Pearl, if I could only do something for you if I could only do something for you! It is all receiving and no giving. You have everything already; there is no lack anywhere for me to fill. Even my love fills no need: you have plenty without it. If I only knew of any lack in your life-and yet, what have Ito supply a lack from?

"What flowers grow in my fields wherewith to bless thee?

Alas, I can but love thee!

May God bless thee, my beloved, may God bless thee!"

The Ledyards exchanged presents on the day, and not the eve, of Christmas; so there was no such ceremony to break up the quiet evening. After the group at the organ had

>roken up, Frank deposited herself on the earth-rug, with her bright hair shining in a heavy braid across her dark blue dress, and one of the "boys" sat down on the arm of is mother's chair, stroking the white hand the laid on his knee; Madge came over and at down by Faith; but Faith slipped to an ottoman at Madge's knee, and put her head n her lap. They all enjoyed each other's company enough, and had subjects enough of common interest to sit thus and talk quiety and happily for the rest of the evening. That night, after the lights were out, and the two girls had lain long enough in the darkness to grow confidential, Faith said:

"It takes all our understanding of each other to avoid embarrassment in my position when it comes to Christmas presents, doesn't it, Pearl?"

"You mean-”

"I mean because I cannot return gifts; and it puts me in a mortifying position either to be noticeably left out, or to receive without returning."

"Dear child!" said Madge, with all her sweetness. "That is just the reason the rest of us never send you anything but cards and greetings. But between you and me surely Besides, I never give you anything expensive; I know that wouldn't be quite pleasant."

"Not expensive in money; but the time and cultivated taste, or the ability to make things, I can no more return than I can money. Now that statuette you gave me on my birthday--"

"Soapstone-cost one dollar."

"And you searched San Francisco two hours for it, and then when you saw it you knew its artistic value. And two hours is what I have to spare on the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving and Christmas, and no other time; and I don't so much as know whether a Christmas card is high art or not. If I were posted, and had time, I know I shouldn't need much money to make presents. But you keep track of whatever there is good that comes to San Francisco; and whether it's a book of theology, or a handscreen, or a heliotype, or a piece of music,

you know it before I do, and get it if you want it, or somebody else sends it to you."

"What difference does it make, Faithie? Lack of time and lack of art-education are only-what is it that sophomore brother of mine gets off?' allotropic forms' of lack of money."

"It isn't just presents: that's a trifle. It's everything." Faith was launched now on one of her rare expressions of emotion; she spoke quietly, but with even uncomfortable intensity. "It's comfort and cheerfulness, and all the good times I have at all. It's only with you and your people that my life is anything but a squalid grind, and that my sense of desolation ceases to frighten me; it's only in your house that anything is pretty or comfortable or happy around me!"

She had not forgotten Mr. Hazen, and those talks on the ferry-boat; it was the misgiving of their meaninglessness that deepened the feeling she expressed. After a pause, she went on, in a more matter-of-fact way:

"I'm going to be away when you exchange presents to-morrow morning: you know, yourself, Madge, that is the only sensible thing to do; and you know I told Mr. Hazen I would be at home. But I haven't any feeling about it, Pearl: it's only that I wish, out of love and gratitude, that I could ever give you something that really filled some need of yours."

Faith's inflexible voice had grown strained in the last sentence with the weight of feeling it was not buoyant enough to bear up musically. It was a little painful.

"Wait," Madge said, lightly. "Your turn will come."

"Ah, no! It will always be the same. It's Fate you know—

"Friday's child is loving and giving,

But Saturday's child must work for its living.""

"Faith, you are Friday's child: you garble the facts!"

"It's the almanac that garbles them," Faith said, dryly.

The night had cried out its tears; the eaves were dripping more and more slowly,

fire in Madge's pretty grate had ceased to fill the room with wavering shadows, and even the embers were turning gray.

"Faith," said Madge, through the deepening darkness, and the sound of her voice showed that she had turned her face more completely toward Faith, "what was it you thought didn't apply to me in the line about 'Sunday's child?""

"There is only one thing I could mean. I think you are wise and witty, and I know you are good.”

You

"I don't think I am melancholy." "No, indeed! But you are not gay, Pearl, as Frank is, and as you used to be. have changed somehow. It was while I was so stunned with my own trouble that I didn't notice."

The last ember disappeared under a coating of ashes.

"I think I am really a Wednesday's child!" said Madge, suddenly, under her breath.

Faith's silence for a few moments contained surprise, sympathy, question, and comment. Then she said, carefully:

"I cannot conceive but one thing that could make you call yourself born to woe." She waited for a check, and then, as Madge lay silent, went on: "And knowing, as I do, of all your acquaintance and your relations. to each, I cannot understand what-" she waited again-"what man there could have been to make you unhappy."

"There was a time-all the months your mother was ill-that you knew almost nothing about my doings and acquaintances,” said Madge, very low.

A silence followed, eloquent enough on both sides. Then Faith said, very low too: "They do not know it at home?" "No. It was a narrow escape. Mamma

was away. ing her I was engaged, while I broke open one I took from the box at the post-office. I ' tore my letter to mamma into little pieces as I walked home. It was a month before your mother died.”

I held a letter in my hand, tell

"You were ill, I remember.

Of course

DEAR FRIEND: I realize, after a night's reflec tion, that I was rash yesterday, and I think I must ask you to release me from our engagement. I yielded to a strong inclination in entering into it, but I am sure it would not be a good thing for me; and I believe you will feel, on further thought, that it would not be for you. I am very sorry for any trouble it may cause you. The engagement is of se brief standing that I suppose you have not mentioned it yet; so there need be no annoyance on that score. I fear you will be displeased by this note, but I write in haste, and will call and explain more fully.

"That, and his signature, Faith." The bald brutality of it, the incomprehensibility of any man's disprizing Pearl, kept Faith eloquently silent again. At last she said:

"Did he call?"

"Yes: I refused to see him."

"I should think you would have no difficulty in despising him."

There was a silence. Then Madge's voice broke into the darkness with such a cry that Faith started.

"Faith, I can't unlove him!"

It haunted Faith all night, while the wind blew outside, and the tall clock on the stairs (the Ledyards possessed an ancestral tall clock on the stairs, as well as andirons) hammered away, and the two girls lay, each pretending to think the other asleep; it haunted her when the wind went down to

ward morning, and she dozed restlessly; when she and Madge dressed and chatted, tacitly agreeing to treat last night's conversation as if it had not been; while the cheerful breakfast, with its "Merry Christmases," went on. It only retreated to the background of her consciousness when Mr. Hazen, standing at her landlady's door, said:

"A very merry Christmas, Miss Faith. Won't you, instead of asking me in, put on your overshoes and walk with me? There was very little rain, after all, and a night-full of wind; and I think we may venture the cañon road."

The sky had not cleared; it takes more than a drizzle to declare a December rain over, and leave land and sea bathed in luminous clearness from Grizzly Peak to Tamalpais, and beyond to the specks of Farallones on the ocean rim. The sky was lowering, but there was clearly no intention of rain before afternoon; the cañon road was muddy, but not annoyingly so; the damp, warm air was full of a faint woodsy smell-laurel, and fern, and yerba buena, and many another ingredient. Faith pulled up long trails of yerba buena, whose leaves, according to their wont in December, were bright purple, brittle, and more fragrant than usual.

"It is our prettiest walk," she said. "I suppose the young people walk here a good deal?"

"Seeking the bubble flirtation,

Even in the cañon's mouth,'

quoted Faith, laughing, from some student parody of Fred Ledyard's teaching. Last night was retreating farther into the background.

side of the shrine that Pearl's white presence filled, she, too, kept a Holy of Holies standing vacant for the "own people” that she had not. Vacant?-even before she knew it was there the tenant had entered in and taken possession.

He saw the purple trails of yerba buena, and the white snow-berries she had just added to them, tremble in her hand. He could not read her silence.

"I have taken you by surprise," he said, gently. "You cannot be sure of your feelings all in a moment. Take your time, my child; I will not press you. Tell me to-mor

row."

"But I do not understand," she said, naively enough. "I cannot see how such a girl as I can please you. I am not pretty, nor winning, nor entertaining; nor educated, according to your standard."

"I will tell you why you please me," Mr. Hazen said, with a grave tenderness, in which there was an undertone of sternness that did not seem meant for her. "It is fair enough that you should know about it. I have learned what a veil for heartlessness lovely eyes and sweet lips and voice can be. They are a mask: there may be a soul under them, but who can tell!

a woman once.

I engaged myself to such That is why your honest eyes and voice and manner are so lovable to me, Faith."

Faith's intent look was, if not a question, at least a suggestion that she was desirous to listen to anything he might choose to add. He hesitated; then, as if there was a compulsion in the grave gaze, went on:

"The morning after she gave me her promise, my name came out in the papers in

And then, in about sixty seconds, Faith knew what the talks on the ferry meant. Her wishing and fearing and misgiving had been vague enough, after all—almost outside of her own consciousness; but now that he had spoken, she realized the hold they had taken on her. Pearl loved her only "next to her own people," and she had loved Pearl best of all the world; she knew now that in

an absurd enough blunder, retracted and apologized for the next day; but before the next day she had written to cancel the engagement. Whether she believed the trumpery story, or whether it was only the very breath of blame she scorned-O, she was white and fine as a piece of Sévres-makes no difference. I had written to her at once

I thought it might fret her-and she said she had received my letter; our engagement

was, of course, at an end; she had been entirely mistaken in me. It happened that I had written that letter in a copying-book that lay on my desk, intending to destroy the tissue copy left in the book; but when her answer came, I threw the book into a drawer, turned the key, and never turned it again till this morning, when I took it out to burn." He took the book from his pocket; he wished to impress on her his indifference. "You may read it if you care to," he said.

Faith by no means cared to: she strongly preferred not to read it; but a shyness kept her silent. She turned over the leaves aim

lessly:

"DEAR FRIEND: I realize, after a night's reflection,

She slipped the book into the wide pocket of her ulster.

"Supposing," she said, "that you were mistaken about that lady; that she was really true to you-should you love her still?” His dark eyes smiled down into hers.

"Dear child! You need not feel that that affair takes anything from you; I never loved her—only a creation of my own imagination that I gave her name to."

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But suppose it had been real?”

"Ah, well! if it had-but it was not. It is you who are real, to the bottom of your loyal heart."

Faith dropped her eyes, and walked on in silence. She had regained her faculties

to release me

The tissue leaf fluttered over, slipping from her numb fingers, and another page lay open, headed with the same date-November 23rd -three years ago:

"My darling, I hope you have not been disturbed by-"

No need of reading another word. Faith was no fool, and it was impossible not to see -in spite of whirling brain and sense of suffocation what it was that had happened three years ago. They had turned some time since, and were walking homeward. Well for Faith then that her voice was inflexible and her manner unimpulsive.

When, a minute later, her breath came freely enough to permit her to say:

"What is this business letter of the same date?" he thought she was talking at random, to tide over the awkwardness of the time.

“I don't know," he said, willing to help her; "let me see. O, yes—a college friend I had foolishly consented to go into an editorial enterprise with. An attractive scheme it was, but unsound. Bush was his nameIsrael Bush. I was afraid, after I had sent the letter, that it was bald and abrupt; my mind was on the other all the time I was writing. I might have spared my regrets, for he hadn't received the letter when I called, later in the day; and the matter was settled pleasantly enough in conversation.

She knew that she held the whole matter in her own hands; Madge and Mr. Hazen would never compare notes on the broken engagement; their estrangement would remain. Nor would they allow that estrangement to interfere with her happiness with each other; she knew them both, and she was sure of her ground.

"O, my Pearl, if I could only do some thing for you! Where is there any lack in your life that I could supply? What have I to supply a lack from?" echoed mockingly through her brain.

They were passing the leafless wild-rose bushes that edge the laurel grove at the mouth of the cañon.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Hazen," she cried, mechanically; "I want to get these rosehips for " she stopped.

The stems of those small deep-colored roses that grow by that grove are very porcupines for thorns; she added the thornystemmed hips, however, to the purple vines and white berries in her ungloved hand.

Mr. Hazen lingered at Faith's door, holding her hand. "Faith," he said, wistfully, "try to think of me as favorably as you can. I won't pretend to feel what I did that other time; one can't--I can't go through that twice; but I do care greatly about this. I am lonely, dear girl, and so are you. And you may trust me to make you happy."