Margret Howth: A Story of To-day

sed him, standing there. He did not see how, after he was left alone, the man lay with his face to the wall, holding his bony hand to his fo

he remembered it now, when it was too late, with bitterness such as wrings a man's heart but once in a lifetime. If ever he had denied to his own soul this Margret, called her alien or foreign, it called her now, when it was too late, to her rightful place; there was not a thought nor a hope in the darkest depths of his nature that did not cry out for her help that night,-for her, a part of himself,-now, when it was too late. He went over all the years gone, and pictured the years to come; he remembered the mon

: why need he think of what might have been? Yet he did think of it through the long winter's night,-each moment his thought of the life to come, or of her, growing more tender and more bitter. Do you wonder at the remorse of this man? Wait, then, until you lie alone, as he had done, through days as slow, revealing as ages, face to face with God and death. Wait until you go down so close to eternity that the life you have lived stands out before you in the dreadful bareness in which God sees it,-as you shall see it some day from heaven or hell: mone

on that day. With his hand over his eyes, he sat quiet by the fire until morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call to another that they would have holiday on Christmas week. It was coming, he thought, rousing himself,-but never as it had been: that could never be again. Yet it was strange how this thought of Christmas took hold of him, after this,-famished his heart. As it approached in the slow-coming winter, the days growing shorter, and the nights longer and more solitary, so Margret became more real to him,-not rejected and lost, but as the wife she might have been, with the simple, pa

done for him, or thanked her; but no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved could look into his eyes, and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would wish, like Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, for her to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every day to see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his sou

the people hung in doubt before them, while the angel of death came again to pass over the land, and there was no blood on any door-post to keep him from that house, how serenely the old earth folded in her harvest, dead, till it should waken to a stronger life? how quietly, as the time came near for the birth of Christ, this old earth made ready for his coming, heedless of the clamour of men? how the air grew fresher above, day by day, and the gray deep silently opened for the snow to go down and screen and whiten and make holy that fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did not fail in its quiet warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feeble way tried to make ready for the birth of Christ. There w

ts. The doctor, as he bandaged his broken arm, hinted at faint rumours in the city of masquerades and concerts. Even Knowles, who had not visited the hospital for weeks, relented and came back, moody and grum. He brought Kitts with him, and started him on talking of how they

glittering with miraculous toys, in the market-carts with their red-faced drivers and heaps of ducks and turkeys, in every stage-coach or omni

arms full of a bundle, which turne

hardest, and gravely kneading at the keys, and stretching it until he made as much discord as five Co

Holmes,-and did not think t

, though he sought for the old time in bitterness of heart; and so, dully remembering his resolve, and waiting for Christmas eve, when he might end it all. Not one of

emed to be that she would not have gifts enough to go round; but deeper than that,-the day was real to her. As if it were actually true that the Master in whom she believed was freshly born into the world once a year, to waken all that was genial and noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honour and pride and love did flash into the realms below heaven with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. LOVE coming into the world!-the idea pleased his ar

eak to walk, but meant to be better soon,-quite well by the holidays. He wished the poor thin

y the preparations the hospital physician was sil

out cured on Christmas eve,"

shrewdly. He was an old Al

e-bull-dog, men. They do what they please,-they never die unless

mself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in life had been by

und him alone in the dreary room, coming in with the frosty breath of the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary and impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja

He looked out more watchful of the face which the coming Christmas bore. The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to some keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the icy pavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was a trading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jolly Christmas face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grown ashamed of their doings, and shut their doors, and covered their windows with frosty trees, and cathedrals, and castles; the shops opened their inmost hearts; some child's angel had touched them, and they flushed out into a magic splendour of Christmas trees, and lights, an

a placard, "Christmas dinners for the poor, gratis;" out of every window on the streets came a ruddy light, and a spicy smell; t

, may have plead for indulgence, as men remember their childish prayers, before going into battle. He came at last, in the quiet lane where she lived, to her little brown frame-shanty, to which you mounted by a flight of wooden steps: there were two narrow win

t, Mas'r?" said

ick. The man stood upright, bac

y word wi'

ro's face grow

id, quietly. "Any word?

ve. Holmes touched

out,"

ooking gaunt,

said, crunching his ragged h

n his head, and looked up

ith a laugh. "But I'll see my girl. I've waited hyur, runnin' the resk,-not darin' to see he

. He stopped at the top, his cowardly nature getting th

nted to see my girl,-that

nothing to him? How did this foul wretch know

spent its warmest heat on the low settee where Lois lay sewing, and singing to herself. She was wrapped up in a shawl, but the hands, he saw, were worn to skin and bone; the gray shadow

can hardly b'lieve it!"-touching the str

to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles she had patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense of colour and grace

n'," she said, anxiously, as she

want and crime had finished their work on her lif

strong by New-Year's; it's only a day or t

a great, warm, beautiful nest for the little cripple,-why need he show her the cold without? He saw her at last go near the door where old Yare sat outside, then hea

king up, bewildered, to Holme

es were growing dim, and drew hi

said, weakly. "I hunted fur

ir back, and was reading the

's somethin' gone wi' my girl. Was

said Holme

, shrilly. "My God! not

m, patting his

e asked, with a frig

er no, ch

thenk o' dyin'. Don't mind, dear

for her over, his spite a

s hands. He kin take it. What does he keer fur me or my girl? I'll not sta

Holmes, stooping suddenly cl

e muttered. "My

nature to be just; but to-night dim perceptions of a deeper justice than law opened before him,-problems he had no ti

me to this. So as I loved him! Oh, Mr. Holmes, he's hed a pore chance in livi

d in her arms with an agony

t keer fur that: it's too late goin' back. But Lo-Mas'r," he mumbled, servilely,

ust crept over

ed,-"I wash my hands of

is with his rar

yours,-so, child! Now put it all out of your

w deep the danger had been; but the flush had

Christmas, Lois,"

weak grip on his hand still, with the vague

ur me yoh

for

hat's comin',

face gr

ered. "For the poor child that loved me" he

w the subtile instincts that drew him out of his self-reliance by the hand of the child that lo

r type of manhood. Did God make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretch crouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed? Some such thought came into Lois's b

"oh, it's far wrong! Ther' 's On

en let it go. There was a long silence. Ho

you to wish me a happy

ing up laughing and growing red: riddles of life did not trouble her childish fancy long. And so he left her, with a dull feeling, as I said before, tha