'Yes, and she is so cold!' Marian cried, drawing near her mother's chair. The fire is out. Edward, what is the matter?'

He did not answer at once, but, kneeling, touched the cold hand, listened to the pulseless heart, and then took Marian's hands in his and held them closely.

'Dearest, be brave, and learn the worst! I have dreaded this for a long time, but my hopes were stronger than my fears. She is at rest!'

'Mother! Mother!'

It was all Marian said; but as she thought of the long hours that she had been indulging in her selfish grief, of that faint, soft call she heard and disregarded, her very heart seemed broken, and she looked on Edward as the murderer of her mother, as the cause of all the overwhelming misery that had fallen upon her.

'You have done this!' she cried, wildly. 'It is all your fault! If you had come to-night, as you

promised, this would not have happened! I will never forgive you, I will never see you again!'

'My darling, this might have happened any moment. I knew it, she knew it, and she was ready. Look at her face, Marian, and take comfort. She is at rest!'

'There is no comfort! Go away and leave me ! I shall never see you again! Oh, mother! mother! If I had only stayed with you!'

Oh, that wretched if! How much misery it has wrought for all of us! Poor Marian Wray, kneeling by her silent, resting mother, knew that of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are, 'It might have been.' She might have seen that last sweet smile, she might have heard some word of comfort from the beloved lips, even felt the tender pressure of the poor, frail hands; and she had been indulging in her own selfish, causeless sorrow, and her dear, gentle mother had passed away for ever!

Once again a passionate feeling of anger surged up in Marian's heart, and she spoke bitter, stinging words to Edward Cowley-words that haunted her long, long after, when she felt the injustice of them, and when reparation seemed impossible.

But he stayed with her during the rest of that fearful night, trying to soothe her, and thinking of everything that could be done to save her trouble; and in the early morning he sent Aunt Sara to stay with her, for Marian was really ill, and unfit to be left alone. When she recovered, after a dangerous illness, her heart was still hard. She would not forgive Edward or listen to his explanation; she blamed him for all the sad events of that memorable Christmas Eve, and repeated she would never forgive him-never see him again.

'We shall meet some day, dear,' he said, sadly, after trying to explain matters. 'At the right time, Marian, we will meet, and then you will understand!'

The next day Marian left Ashfield. She had sold up the few possessions left by her mother, let the cottage, paid the few debts they owed, and left the place that had been her home all her young life, without any fixed idea for the future, and without a friend in the world.

CHAPTER II.

CHRISTMAS EVE! Clear, crisp, frosty, cheery; with the shops glowing and glistening, the people pausing to look in the windows, with monster geese and dyspeptic turkeys tempting the passers-by, bready sausages, floury chickens, glorious ribs of beef, and heavy legs of mutton, a typical, delightful Christmas Eve in the noisy markets and busy thoroughfares of East London :

but chill and dreary enough in the quieter streets, cheerless beyond description in the narrow lanes and dark courts of Whitechapel.

From a clean-looking house in one of the dull brick houses near Bethnal Green Museum a woman stepped out into the chill, frosty air, with a little shiver; then, with a glance at the stars and a swift smile, she drew her dark waterproof cloak closer round her and hurried along the quiet side-streets, as if she knew the way, and also as if the errand was not entirely unpleasant.

'I could not have done it ten years ago!' she thought, as she turned down a darker passage, leading to a court, and entering a dark, miserable-looking house, tripped up the rickety stairs with a light step. She had learned by experience that light steps are nearly as comforting nearly as comforting as pleasant smiles to a patient.

'Well, Jennie,' she cried cheerily, 'how are you getting along?'

'Oh, Miss Wray, how good of you to come and see me on Christmas Eve!' the girl replied, extending a thin hand.

'Why not, dear? Is it not the best Eve of all Eves?' Miss Wray said, laying aside her cloak.

'Yes, for love, home, warm firesides, and friendly faces-not for such a place as this! How could you leave your own pleasant room to come to see me?' 'Because I thought perhaps you might want me, and I wanted you. Now tell me how you have been, and how you have spent the day.'

'Just as you see me-helpless, solitary, and suffering. The cold makes my back ache dreadfully, and I cannot even keep up the fire. It is very miserable! And the girl burst into tears.

'Come, come, this will never do!' Miss Wray said, bustling about. 'You must take a more cheerful view of things. There, see how the fire burns! Now I'll hang my cloak over the window, and we will be as cheerful and cosy as can be. Not had your medicine or tea? This is too bad! How did it happen?'

'Mrs. Bryce, the landlady, went out marketing in the afternoon, and has not come back yet, I suppose ; or, more likely, has quite forgotten me.'

'It's a busy time for her, Jenny: you must try and make excuses,' Marian said, as she arranged the little table for tea. 'Poor Mrs. Bryce is old, and has many things to think of.'

'She should think of me-she is paid for it!' Jennie cried, fretfully. I cannot make excuses for her!'

'It's not easy, I know, when one feels themselves slighted and neglected,' Miss Wray said, with sudden gravity. 'Shall I tell you a little story, Jennie, about the foolishness of not making excuses?'

The sick girl's eyes brightened at once. Miss Wray had a wonderful knack of telling stories, making them seem real; but on that occasion there was no seeming: it was the true history of a Christmas Eve ten years before, telling how a wilful, impatient girl, refused to listen to the best of all excuses--the call of Duty— how she arrived in the great City of London alone, friendless, and ignorant; how, after weary months of waiting, she found occupation as a teacher in a school; how a terrible epidemic broke out, and she helped to nurse the patients who were not removed; how the Doctor suggested that she should become a nurse instead of a teacher; how hard and thankless a work it seemed, waiting on fretful patients, till she learned to make excuses; how after that the work became easier, though it was still a hard, lonely life. But the girl was content--happy even,' she said, with a bright smile; but it took her ten years to learn the lesson, Jennie.'

'And the lover,' Jennie asked, eagerly, 'did she ever forgive him?'

'She forgave him many a Christmas Eve ago, and understood him; but it was too late. He said they should meet again at the right time, but it has never come yet!'

'It will, it will, Miss Wray!' Jennie cried. 'It must come, you know, or the story would not be right!'

Marian smiled sadly. Ten years was a long time, and Ashfield a long way off, and no doubt Edward had forgotten. Then she busied herself putting away the tea-things, tidied the hearth, shook up poor Jennie's cushion with the light touch of a loving as well as a trained hand, and prepared to read the poor sufferer to sleep.

'Why, he never came at night before!' Marian said in astonishment. He did not think you worse, Jennie ?'

'Oh, no! but it was a new doctor, you know, and he takes more pains with the poor people than the other. He said I might have a better night if he saw me.' 'That was kind! What is his name, Jennie?'

'I don't know, Miss: we call every one the Doctor here, and nothing else. Hush! here he is! He steps up so brisk and light-quite different from the other!'

There was a little tap at the door, and the new Doctor entered, followed by the panting landlady.

For one moment Marian thought she must be dreaming; then she advanced with outstretched hands. 'Edward!-Doctor Cowley!' she faltered.

'Marian! At last we have met-and in the right place!' he added, with a glance round the bare but neat garret-' and at the right time!'

Mrs. Bryce quietly left the room, and Jennie stared at the long-parted friends.

'It's the story!' she softly whispered; and then she turned her face aside, for Marian was weeping silently, and the Doctor was holding her hand.

For a little while they stood looking into each other's eyes; then Edward turned to Jennie and spoke to her gently and earnestly.

'You will never recover here, I am afraid,' he said. 'The air is too close; the bed too hard. I'm going to send you away in a day or two, to a home where you will be much better taken care of. Are you her nurse, Marian?'

'Only for to-night, I fear. I have another patient I promised to spend to-morrow with. After that I have a long engagement.'

'Yes, yes; but I know of a longer and previous one!' he whispered. 'You belong to me now, dear; and I cannot spare you any longer. The right time has come, and this is the happiest Christmas Eve of my life!'

CHAPTER I.

Like silver lamps in a distant shrine
The stars are sparkling bright;
The bells of the City of God ring out,

For the Son of Mary was born to-night:
The gloom is past, and the morn at last,

Is coming with orient light.' W. C. DIX. T was Christmas Eve, in the year 1620. Out-of-doors, at Caryll Place, there were stars of gold in the sky and stars of snow on the trees, stars of frost-work on the window-panes

and stars of carved work on the thick stone mullions.

Indoors, silver stars, illuminated with the soft light of tapers, sparkled on the blue silk hangings of the great state chamber, and shone with fresher, newer radiance, on the blue velvet curtain that fell on either side of the carved oak cradle, wherein lay the new-born heir of the house. Over the head of the little sleeper hung a larger silver star, set in the boss that terminated the curtain-rod, and having emblazoned round it the motto of the Carylls: 'Usque ad Auroram’— Until the Dawn. Loving eyes of father and mother were watching the sheen of that silver star; loving

thoughts of father and mother were musing on the little face that slumbered underneath; their star of hope, that must lighten up the darkness of this world. for them, shining more and more until the dawning of the perfect day. Beneath the window the village children sang the last words of their carol

'Christ's star, it shineth clear;'

and the happy mother fell asleep, and dreamed that she saw her child tall, and strong, and beautiful, following the Star of Bethlehem across the trackless desert. And then there was a sudden flood of light,

and the star was gone; but, behold, it was shining

on the brow of her son.

But Sir Arthur Caryll and his beautiful wife, Dame Margery, were not alone in their joy over the true Christmas gift of a first-born son. In the poor home of one of their labourers a baby-boy lay by the side of his mother, smoothing for her already with his tiny hands the hard path of her poverty-stricken life; but the child's father was troubled as he thought of the future. It is a hard world thou hast come into, pretty one!' he said, as he took him in his arms. 'God help thee! What hast thou done that it should be so hard for thee and so soft for thy young master ?'

But an answer to the heart-broken question came ringing clear and sweet through the silence of the starlight :

'He neither shall be born,

In housen nor in hall;
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.

He neither shall be wrapped
In purple nor in pall,

But all in fair linen

That usen babies all.

He neither shall be rocked

In silver nor in gold,

But in a wooden manger
That resteth on the mould.'

'God forgive me!' said the man, as the singing died away; it was a harder world for the Master of us all. Let us thank the good Lord for giving thee to us. Maybe He meant thee to be His Christmas gift to us.'

And God made the world soft for the poor little child. Dame Margery, hearing of his birth, directed that all needful things should be sent for him and his mother; and when, by way of gratitude, the poor woman begged that her ladyship would choose his name, answer was brought he should be christened Nowell, to remind him of his Christmas birthday.

So the child was baptized Nowell, at the same time that his little master received his father's name

of Arthur; and the two children, sundered so widely by the difference of earthly rank, were together admitted into the sacred order of Christ's Knights, and made one in heavenly rank. Would they both,' thought Lady Margaret, 'keep their high estate, and shine as the stars for ever and ever?' Yes, if she could have seen the end, seen the twin stars ever shining brighter and brighter until the morning broke, she would have been satisfied. But God would not let her wait to see the end, at least in this world. Her Christmas star of hope had not long risen when His voice called her beyond the stars into His perfect sunlight. With the dawning of Lady Day the angel

came too to her,

'Bearing a Lily in his hand,
For Death's Annunciation.'

And, like St. Peter, she arose, and went with the opened to them of his own accord,' and she entered angel till they came to the Gate of Paradise, that

in, and was at rest.

And her poor motherless babe was given to little Nowell's mother to nurse with her own; so the children became foster-brothers. And oftentimes, when Nowell's father saw the black ribbon on his foster-son's white frock, he wished he had never said the world was soft for him and hard for his own boy. How could the world be soft for a poor babe that would never remember the softness of a mother's touch or the sweetness of a mother's kiss? But God knows best, and there are some questions for which it is well to seek no answer.

CHAPTER II.

'Be strong to hope, O heart! Though day is bright,

The stars can only shine
In the dark night.

Be strong, O heart of mine,
Look tow'rds the light.'

A. A. PROCTER.

It was more than twenty years since the birth of Arthur Caryll and his faithful foster-brother and servant, Nowell. Christmas had come again, but this Christmas Eve there were no stars of gold in the skies or stars of silver in Caryll House; only the sculptured stars on the thick mullions kept their patient watch, 'Usque ad Auroram;' and their wellloved legend made music in Arthur's heart as he heard the carol children, despite the drenching rain, sing the words that had welcomed him to life: 'Christ's star, it shineth clear.'

This Christmas, however, was marked by but little of the festivity that had been the custom of the place ever since Arthur could remember. The Civil War

between King Charles and the Commons had broken out in the preceding summer, and Sir Arthur rightly said that, with such a curse on the land, it was no time to make merry. Accordingly, after the little singers had been duly regaled with cake and ale they were sent away, and there being no friends to keep Christmas with them Sir Arthur and his son were left alone.

'This is a sorry birthday for thee, my boy,' he said; a strange welcome after thy long travels, to find thy king warred upon by his own subjects, and thy father but waiting thy return to ride with thee to the royal camp, and strike a good blow for the King and for the Right.'

'For the Right, my father, I might strike, perchance; but, alas! the King and the Right are not the same now-a-days.'

'How now! what sayest thou? '

light and warmth of his home into the cold and darkness of the pitiless rain. Darkness, too, came down into his heart, and almost hid the starlight there. But the necessity for action pressed upon him, and rousing himself from his well-nigh heart-broken reverie he went round to the part of the house occupied by the servants, to summon his ever-faithful Nowell, and see whether he would consent to follow his master's broken fortunes.

'Follow thee, my dearest master? To the world's end! But what wouldst thou have me to do?'

'First, good Nowell, I must see my bride. But it is a dreary walk across my father's park and hers. Go and await me at thy mother's.'

'Nay, Sir. I should be a poor follower did I shrink from a few drops of rain.'

And so, beneath the bare, drenched trees, through the long wet grass, they went, till they reached Holme

'Traitor thou art, and traitor I will call thee. Thou art no son of mine. I disown thee! yea, disown thee for ever! though to do it is to tear out my very heart.'

'But, Sir, I would not fight against the King . . .' 'Hold, villain ! Thinkest thou I would let thee rot here in ease and idlesse, while, maybe, the King's very life-blood is poured out on the battle-field? Begone! thou art no son of mine!'

'But, father, my bride. I promised I would wed her ere Lent. For her sake, if not for mine, make not thine only son an outcast.'

private audience for his master of sweet Mistress Alice. He soon returned, followed in a few minutes by the lady and her maid, who was Nowell's own sister.

Alice Holme was a beautiful fair-haired girl of eighteen. She had been betrothed to Arthur for two years, and, owing to the constant letters that passed between them during his residence abroad, they knew each other better than affianced lovers of those times generally did.

As soon as she saw him she ran towards him with a little cry. 'What wouldst thou, dear heart? Hath aught befallen thee?' And then, as he told her all, the roses faded away from her face, and darkness like that which had come into his heart overshadowed her.

'But take courage, sweet one. If only thou wilt be brave all may be well, and none shall separate us. Nay, I know what thou wouldst say thy father, were he living, would call me traitor, even as mine own hath done. But believe me, Alice, I am no traitor. Only I cannot see my way in this unholy strife. It is starlight with me, not sunlight, and I will not fight in the dark.'

'And thou art right, dear love; as indeed, methinks, thou ever art.'

'Thou wert always ready to trust me, sweet. Couldst thou trust me yet a little more, and leave home, and lands, and wealth, to come with me?'

'Home, and lands, and wealth, are mine own to lose or to keep; and I will gladly lose them for thee, dear heart. Thou knowest they go to my young kinsman, Ralph, if I wed without Sir Arthur's consent.'

'And that he will never grant! I should not ask so much of thee, mine own, for I have nought to offer thee but the little manor I inherit from my mother.