Mr North's dream

The house stood in the midst of extensive grounds in one of the many suburbs of South London, a green lawn dotted with shrubs lying before the front-entrance. Land was at a discount there in the old days, and Mr. North had bought the place for a comparatively small sum. He was a man of some consideration in the city, of high commercial and private character, well regarded by his fellow-merchants.

The lawn lay steeped in the lovely twilight of a midsummer evening. The moon glittered on the leaves of the laurels; the flowers, closing their petals, threw out their sweet scent, so that the air was rich with perfume. It was wafted to the open glass-doors of a small sitting-room, where stood a young girl; and her heart, as she inhaled it, grew more rapturously joyful than it had been before, if such a thing were possible.

It was Millicent Carden, the niece of Mr. North's wife, and his ward. A merry, guileless, loving girl of seventeen; not quite eighteen yet; gay, careless, sweet-tempered. Her face was fair and refined, with a bright bloom just now on the delicate features; her light brown hair, unconfined by comb and fashion, fell in silken curls. Mrs. North had gone out that night, taking her daughters, Frances and Amy. Mr. North, his son, and his nephew, Archie, were in the dining-room, for they had been delayed in the City, and came home late. The glow on Millicent's face was only a reflection of the glow that illumined her heart; nay, her whole being. For she had learned to love one with a strange fervour; and in such a nature as hers--deep, silent, ardent--love changes the whole current of life, and is as a very ray snatched from Eden.

The room-door opened and some one came in. Millicent did not turn; she stood where she was, and began to hum a tune carelessly; but her pulses leaped up with a bound, and the cheeks' glow increased to crimson.

"Why, Millicent! I thought you were going with the rest."

Ah, she could turn calmly now. The colour faded.

The pulses became sober again. It was only John North.

"I did not care to go, John. And your mother thought we should be too many."

"Then I hope my mother made an apology for leaving you. Frances or Amy might have stayed at home."

"Frances and Amy are ages older than I. Don't look so solemn, John: it was my own wish to remain; I proposed it myself. Is my uncle not going?"

"Yes. But not with me: later. He has some--matters to settle first with Archibald. I'll go out this way, I think. Good-night to you, cousin mine."

John North had made the pause in reference to the matters his father had to settle with Archibald. Miss Carden had thought nothing of it. If she had momentarily thought there was anything strange in the words, it was the name Archibald--for she had never heard him called anything but Archie. She watched John North cross the lawn in his evening dress. He was a tall, fine man of three-and-twenty, and had just been made a partner with his father. The young lady stepped out on the gravel and silently executed a dancing-step.

"You good old John! As if I should want to go when they did not invite him! As if I would go, unless my aunt had made me! I fancied John suspected something last week, though," she pursued, more thoughtfully, bringing her dance to a conclusion; "he looked so hard at us that evening when he came up and saw us in the laurel walk. Oh, how beautiful the night is! how lovely everything is in the whole world!"

Stooping, she plucked one of the sweet June roses, and put it within the folds of her light summer dress, her hands and arms looking so fragile and faultless in the moonlight. Then she stepped back indoors, and stood gazing out on the fair scene. Things were so still! Not a sound broke the solitude; and railways, with their shrieks and turmoil, had not quite cut up the place then. As the light in the west grew darker and the moon brighter, the nightingales began their song in the neighbouring trees; the twinkling stars came out in their canopy; the light on the laurels turned to silver. Insensibly the girl herself broke softly into melody. Six months before, Archie North had given her "Lalla Rookh;" she had soon learned its seductive songs by heart.

"There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream
To sit in the roses, and hear the bird's song."

The striking of the clock interrupted her. Ten. Ten! Why, what could they be about so long in the dining-room? With a light step, she went along the gravel walks, and so round to the dining-room window.

It was closed. Closed that hot summer night: and her uncle, Mr. North, was so fond of air, having the windows always open, except in the dead of winter! Millicent looked into the lighted room, and what she saw caused her heart to beat wildly.

Archie North stood against the wall; his arms folded, his head bowed, his good-looking face inflamed with tears, his whole aspect one of humiliation--of intense shame. He was as tall as his cousin John, but younger--only twenty. Only twenty! And exposed at that age, without a home (excepting lodgings) to the snares and temptations of a London life! On the table lay some papers; they looked like bills; and Mr. North stood opposite Archie, talking, with his right hand outstretched, and an awful look of severity upon his face. Millicent turned sick with undefined fear, and crept back to the little room. What could the shame be?

The dining-room door opened, and voices were heard in the hall. Millicent, trembling from head to foot, looked out of this room cautiously. Archie had taken up his hat and a light over-coat, that he wore to protect his clothes from the summer dust.

"Never attempt again to cross my threshold," Mr. North was saying, in the cold stern tone of an irrevocable decree. "You are a disgrace to the name North, and I cast you off for ever from me and mine."

Archie went out without an answering word, and North shut the hall-door upon him. Then he crossed the hall and went up the stairs, his boots creaking. Mr. North's boots always creaked; it had a pompous sound, like himself, for he was a pompous man. He was dark, upright, portly, with a head well thrown back; eminently respectable, eminently selfimportant: doing his business strictly, as respectable men like to do; a large subscriber to charities, a good husband and father; but, in the midst of it all, very hard.

Millicent went back to the open window, and saw Archie North crossing the lawn, the light coat swung on his arm. Was he going away for ever? With a heart sick to faintness, with a mental confusion that seemed to put everything into a tumult, she ran after him, conscious of nothing but the moment's impulse.

"Archie! Archie!"

Archie North turned round. He was not her cousin; was not in fact related to her. If he had begun to love her, however deeply and enduringly, he knew it must all be at an end now.

"What is the matter, Archie?"

"I thought you were out to-night, Millicent."

"No. The others went; I did not care to go. My uncle is angry with you: what is it?"

"Angry!" he repeated, as if the word were a perfect mockery to illustrate Mr. North's state of feeling towards him. "Yes; he is angry."

"But you have not deserved it."

"I have deserved it all; and worse."

With his hand upon her shoulder he went back across the lawn to the room she had quitted. Standing just within the open window, he looked down upon her while he spoke. The moonlight played upon his troubled face, hard now almost as his uncle's, and lighted up the blue eyes that seemed filled with nothing but a dogged obstinacy.

"I am going away, Millicent. London can no longer hold me, so a distant quarter of the globe must do so. I have been upon the wrong track this long time. God forgive me! I never meant it to come to this."

She tried to speak, but not a word came in answer. Her lips were white, her throat beating.

"On my soul, I had resolved to do better!--to set about redeeming the past. For your sake, Millicent; for your sake. And I should have carried it out, Heaven helping me. When I am far away, my darling; when they tell you wicked stories of me--and yet not wicked in one sense, for they are true--remember this: it was you who awoke me to better things. It has been just one faint glimmer of light in a dark career: dark before; doubly dark after, for that's what it will be. God bless you, Millicent."

He clasped her to him with a close pressure and kissed her unresisting face, down which the tears were flowing. What Millicent said she did not fully know at the time, and never remembered afterwards; confused words of redeeming the past, of allowing her fortune to help him to redeem it.

"No, no," he said, with a kind of harsh laugh. "I am a great blackguard, Millicent, but not quite so bad a one as that. Thank you for the thought," he added, holding her two hands in his, and looking down into her eyes as she stood before him. Thank you, my darling, for all; thank you, above all, for your love. I do not suppose--bear with me one moment--that we shall ever meet again on this side the grave. If I can redeem things over yonder--but I'd better say nothing of that. My lot will probably be downwards: you will become the wife of some happy man, and the mother of his children. Fate deals out her prizes equally. Fare you well; fare you well for ever."

With his coat on his arm as before, he went swinging across the lawn again, leaving Millicent ready to die of the moment's agony. And yet it all seemed so unreal! At the gate, lingering amidst the shrubs that surrounded it, and looking out for him, was John North.

"I couldn't go, Archie, in the uncertainty," he said, coming forth into the moonlight. "How has it ended?"

"How should it end?" returned Archie. "There was only one way."

"You are discarded?"

"Of course I am discarded. Sent adrift. Your father is a harsh man in anything that touches his respectability, or his name. Nine city magnates out of every ten might have done just the same."

"What shall you do?"

"What I can. He has not been all hardness. He said something about giving me a fresh start in life: paying my passage to Australia, and transmitting fifty pounds, to be touched on my landing there. I am to meet him to-morrow. I don't grumble, John; I've deserved all I've got, and more. I shall see you, old fellow, once again before I start."

A late omnibus passed. Archie North hailed it, and mounted on the top; and John went away quickly to the neighbouring house, that evening keeping festival.

Poor Millicent! She was dragging herself and her misery upstairs, when her uncle came suddenly out of his room in evening dress. She turned swiftly into a niche in the wall, and stood there until he had passed.

Archibald North set sail for Australia. There was no mystery made about him or his ill-doings, and Millicent heard what the rest heard. He had not been guilty of any crime; had not robbed his uncle's cash-box, or forged his name: but he had been an excessively prodigal sinner on his own score, and come to general grief; he had made an ocean of disreputable debts, and altogether gone to the bad.

"And he had the opportunity of doing so well!" cried Mr. North, making severe comments in the bosom of his family. "I gave him a stool in my counting-house; I invited him here frequently; and this has been my reward! What he might have gone on to but for my providential discovery of his sins, I shudder to think of. Henceforth let his name be as though we had never known him."

And it was so.

Six years went by, and the seventh was quickly passing. Mr. North and his children prospered and prospered; the ill-doing nephew had never been heard of, and was quite forgotten. Mrs. North was dead; Amy had married; but with the exception of those two losses, the inmates of the old home were the same.

It was Christmas-Eve, and bitter weather; ice and frost without, ruddy warmth and comfort within. The dessert-table was drawn to the fire in the dining-room, and Mr. North and his son sat there. John was deep in the pages of a review he had brought home from town, but Mr. North was only reading the faces in the fire, and sipping his port wine at intervals. He saw the face of his dead wife, whom he mourned sincerely, if soberly; he saw that of his absent daughter, who had a happy home of her own; he saw that of his younger son, also married and flourishing. Mr. North's own face was smooth, after the manner of a man who has a calm conscience and a heavy balance-sheet--and he had both. His ledgers showed increase upon increase: on the other side he had dispensed largely to Christmas charities, public and private. Had Mr. North's thoughts been laid bare, they would have been seen to ignore altogether a sense of sin, and to run very much after the bent of a certain Pharisee: "I am thankful that I am not as other men are." Mr. North believed himself to be supremely good: he fully thought he was going swimmingly on the road that leads direct to heaven.

He saw other faces in the fire, besides those mentioned; his son, John's, who was sitting beside him; and Millicent Carden's. He was wishing they would form a union with each other, those two; he had wished it for some time. Millicent was of age now. In accordance with her father's will, she did not attain her majority until she was twenty-four: and Mr. North had then formally resigned to her his trusteeship, informing her at the same time that she was worth twenty thousand pounds, well invested. Had he been John, he should have proposed to her years ago; times and again he had felt inclined to say a prompting word; but he knew how much better these things work when left alone. Millicent had been ill in the summer with fever--and she did not seem to have recovered entire strength.

"You will be thirty in a few months, John," suddenly observed Mr. North, breaking the silence.

John looked up from his review. "Yes; getting quite a middle-aged man."

"Not that yet. It will come, though, for years creep on us imperceptibly. Why don't you marry?"

Mr. John North cut two pages of his book before replying. "I don't know that any one would have me."

"What nonsense, John! In your case it would be only to ask and have. But if you don't ask, why of course--"

Mr. North did not finish the sentence. John laughed, but did not attempt to pursue the subject. His father looked at him.

"Yes, sir, though you may laugh, many would answer 'Yes' to the asking of John North. But there's one, above all the rest, whom I should wish you to choose."

"Why, who's that?" returned John, in some surprise.

"You need not go far to find her. Millicent Carden."

John North returned to his review again with a slight smile. And it vexed his father.

"Have you no better answer than that to give me?"

"I should not care to marry Millicent. She is my cousin, you know."

"And what though she is your cousin?" indignantly spoke Mr. North. "She has twenty thousand pounds."

John cut his review.

"And she is one of the best and nicest girls that the whole world contains. Don't be a fool, John."

"She is a sweet girl; a charming girl," came the ready assent. "But I have not thought of her as a wife."

"Think now, then."

The silence, and the impassive look on his son's face, did not seem to promise well for the proposition. Was Mr. North going to be thwarted in his hope?--the vexation the doubt brought showed him how surely he had been indulging it.

"Make up your mind to marry, and take Millicent," urged Mr. North impressively. "My blessing shall be upon it. John, I have hoped for this union a long while: cherished the thought. I believe."

John North grew serious then. He closed the book, leaving the paper-knife between its pages.

"I am sorry for that, sir; very sorry to disappoint you, if you have indeed cherished it. I had no idea you were doing anything of the sort. Putting myself entirely out of the question, I am sure Millicent would not have me. She would not have any one."

"She is well again."

"Her health I was not thinking of, but her inclination. I have never exchanged a word with her upon the subject, but I am convinced her intention is not to marry. Millicent had her little romance years ago: and wore it out."

"Why, what do you mean?" cried Mr. North. "Would you insinuate that Millicent was ever in love?"

"Yes; unhappily. With Archie North."

Mr. North stared at his son, as if he were unable at once to take in the words. There was scorn in his eye, contempt in his tone, when he answered.

"In love with Archie North! Why, she was a child when he went away."

"Oh no, she was not: a girl of seventeen or eighteen is as capable of love as a woman of thirty; perhaps more so. Father, I know I am right. And Archie was in love with her."

"Archie, the reprobate!" apostrophized the elder man: and the utter condemnation of the tone, the hatred it expressed, served to prove that the offending nephew had never been forgiven--no, not in the least degree. "At any rate, if it be as you say, though I doubt it, she has had time to forget her fancy," added Mr. North. "I would rather say her folly."

"Quite time. But I do not think she has done it."

"And you would make this an objection to asking her to be your wife?--a child's passing fancy! I should have given you credit for more sense."

"Pardon me, sir, I did not say so. My own wishes, for or against, need not be brought into the discussion at all. What I said was, that Millicent would not have me, though I did ask her: and I am sure she would not."

John North opened the book again as he spoke, and went on cutting its leaves. For some little time he had been indulging a day-dream of his own, but it was not connected with Millicent. Mr. North tossed off the glass of port at his elbow, and said no more. He had never thought his clever business son so near a fool; and he intended to prove him one.

In the pretty garden-room, where you once saw Millicent Carden, you may see her still. The family often sat there. The window was closed now, the warm green curtain fell across its shutters in ample folds; the fire burnt clear and bright; the tea waited on the table, and Millicent sat ready to make it. Miss North had gone to a neighbour's to help in dispensing the prizes from a Christmas-tree, which she had for some days been assisting to adorn.

She sat at the table, waiting for her uncle and cousin to come in. But ah, how altered! Scarcely a trace remained of the winsome, happy girl of seventeen, to whom her boy-lover had bidden so abrupt and miserable an adieu six years and a half before. She wore a soft dress of light grey cashmere, and a close white net cap, very pretty, but almost as simple as that of a Quakeress. No ornament, excepting a gold chain, and some fine lace at her wrists. After the summer's fever, her hair grew so thin that they cut it close, and she had to wear caps: it was growing again now, but she wore the caps still. The features were delicate as of yore: the deep hazel eyes more thoughtful. She looked like one who has passed through tribulation.

For the first time the thought struck Mr. North, as he came in to tea, proving how slow we are, for the most part, to take up indications of the familiar, every-day life by which we are surrounded. In the subdued meek manner, the quiet face, the unobtrusive attire, so void of fashion and frivolity, Mr. North saw reason to think his son was right. His unobservant eyes, closed hitherto, were rudely opened.

"But she has had time, and to spare, to forget the folly," he thought. "Even its remembrance must have long ago passed away. John would win her for the asking."

John sat by her now, just as usual. But, as Mr. North noted their manners to each other, so entirely that of brother and sister, a slight doubt arose to Mr. North, or rather would have arisen, but that he drove it back again.

"You look tired, Millicent."

"Do I? I am not tired; although Frances and I have had a busy day, giving away the things. The poor people are all so grateful to you, uncle."

Mr. North received the gratitude as his due. He deemed himself quite an earthly angel, in the matter of charity. "All right," he said in answer, "I hope none have been forgotten."

"If Millicent's tired, it must be at our keeping her waiting so long for tea," cried John. "It's half-past nine o'clock."

"Time you went for Frances, John," she said.

"I am going. Those mites were to be put to bed at nine, and she said she did not care to remain after that. She is fond of children, is Frances."

He rose to go out as he spoke; but opened the door again, and said a word to Millicent, who nodded an answer. "I shall be ready, John."

Mr. North, buried in his own reflections, did not observe it. He was making up his mind to speak to Millicent, and have that absurd question set at rest that John had started. He could not believe it yet; the longer he thought of it the more ridiculous it seemed. And yet he hesitated, lest he might do harm--harm to John's remote chance of succeeding.

The tea-things were sent away, and Millicent took out her work; some slippers she was working for John. Mr. North sat on in indecision.

"Another Christmas-Eve, Millicent!" he said, when he at length turned to her. "The years steal upon us, my dear."

"They do, uncle."

"I have been thinking to-night--one gets thoughtful at Christmas-tide--that it is time you were married."

Millicent looked at him, some wonder in her eyes; and a smile stole over her sweet face.

"You should say that to Frances, uncle. It is her turn first; she is ever so much older than I am."

"Oh, Frances," he slightingly said. "My opinion is she does not think of marriage. She lets her chances slip."

"Neither do I think of it, uncle."

"Nonsense," he testily responded; "I shall insist upon your marrying. I mean, I wish you to do it."

"No living person has a right to insist on my course of action," was the firm answer. "Not even you, uncle; I am my own mistress. Forgive me for saying it."

Mr North's face darkened. "A fable was whispered to me--as a fable I regarded it--that some--some--what shall I call it?--some love nonsense had lain between you and that miserable nephew of mine, who was a disgrace to his name."

A change passed over her face. The eyelids quivered, the mouth grew sad and pale. Mr. North watched the signs.

"Millicent! was it so? Answer me, child. Surely you can answer? It must be as a thing dead and buried now."

"Yes; I cared for him. And he for me."

"But you do not care still? You cannot."

"Perhaps not. I suppose not. I think he must be dead," she continued, a kind of weariness in her tone. "He would have been back ere now if he had lived."

"Back!" cried the scandalized man, "back! He'd know better than to venture back here. Why!" looking condemningly at her, "you would not have countenanced him had he returned?"

"Yes, I should. Stay a moment, uncle; don't be angry with me. But for believing him to be dead, I could not say this to you; I could not speak of him; I have thought he must be dead--oh, for these three years past. But had he come back with his--his wrong-doings--redeemed; hoping, purposing to do well in the future, I would have welcomed him, and helped him in it. Let it pass; why should the discussion arise?"

"And it is for this man's sake--dead, though you admit he probably is--that you deliberately say you will never marry? Shame upon you, Millicent! I am thankful your poor aunt is not alive to hear it."

"I did not say I should never marry," she meekly returned, and her tone was full of pain and contrition, as if accepting as her due the shame he cast on her. "I would not marry now; no one living could tempt me to do so; but I cannot answer for what I may do in the future--in years to come. The probabilities are that I never shall marry; still, I cannot answer for it. We all change so, uncle; as you must know."

It seemed so complete a check to any hope for his son, that Mr. North was angered beyond repression. He called Archie sundry hard names, recapitulating his committed sins and offences, in a far more comprehensive manner than Millicent had heard in the days of the trouble. She listened without comment, folding up the slipper and putting it away, until his wrath had expended itself and he was fain to cease. Then she spoke.

"Yes, uncle; I dare say it was all very true, miserably true; but you know he might not have continued so. There is such a thing as young men awaking to the errors of their course and entering on a better."

Mr. North would have answered that there was no chance of the young man under discussion awaking to the error of his, but that his niece had left the room. She came back with her bonnet on: at which he looked surprised. She and Frances had wished to go to a Christmas-Eve service at a church close by, and John had promised to take them. Even while she was explaining this, they came for her.

Mr. North remained alone. Matters through life had gone so smoothly with him that he could not bear to be crossed. It tried both himself and his temper. He knocked the fire about, he paced the room, he walked into the hall in his restlessness. A good, domesticated girl like Millicent, and twenty thousand pounds, slipping through his favourite son's fingers! Mr. North dashed open the front-door, seeking a breath of the cold fresh air to cool his hot and angry brow.

It was colder than he thought for; flakes of snow had begun to fall, and there was some ice on the door-step; for Mr. North slipped upon it, and he would have measured his length on the ground but for the extended arm of some visitor, who had approached the door, and saved him. Mr. North threw his own arm around the pillar, while he took breath and recovered his equanimity.

"Merciful powers! I was all but down!"

"It is my uncle!" cried an answering voice. "I was not quite sure of it, sir, until you spoke. May I come in?"

To say that Mr. North recoiled in some terror; to say that he gazed at the speaker in alarm, would not be to say much. Was it his nephew, Archie, standing there, or was it not? With the past conversation, turning on Archie North, with his mind full of him, Mr. North for one single moment fancied he was being deceived by some spectral vision, and backed into the hall.

Archie followed him and shut the door. It was not the Archie of former days, strong, active, buoyant, but a sort of broken-down man, who was lame, and walked with the help of a stick. Mr. North, seeming almost as if he really fled from a phantom, backed yet again into the parlour he had quitted: Archie and his stick went after him.

There ensued a scene. A scene little fitted for the blessed Christmas-tide about to dawn. When Mr. North had once taken in the fact that it was his nephew in real flesh and blood, and not a deception of fancy, his passion burst out. Archie had come at an unlucky time; but for his uncle's mind having first been freshly embittered against him, he might have met with a less harsh reception.

The traveller strove to explain his appearance and a little of the past. For six years he had been working manfully in Australia: all his bad habits, his careless ways eradicated; he had earned his living, but not enough to put by anything of consequence--great luck did not attend him. A changed man, yearning for home and friends, he had determined to return to the old country, where he could equally earn a competence; and he set sail. The ship, when she had arrived very near her destination, was wrecked on the coast of the Isle of Wight; and Archie had received an injury on the rocks, from which he was slowly recovering. It had detained him, and exhausted his available funds. He had written an account of this to Mr. North, which letter he supposed would have been delivered that morning, and stated that he was following close upon it.

All this he essayed to explain. Mr. North did not catch a word of it; he had not seen any letter. He put up his hands and stormed at Archie; he drove him forth, calling him very hard names in the process: he told him he did not know him henceforth, and never had known him since that wicked time seven years ago. Finally he closed the hall-door upon him; and the unhappy wanderer limped away across the lawn.

Mr. North sat down by the fire to recover himself He believed he had done a righteous thing in discarding the once bad man; and his own passion he excused to himself. One cannot be always watchful, says the plastic conscience. Snatches of Archie's explanation stole into his mind now imperfectly, though he had not seemed to hear any of it at the time; amidst them a confused reminiscence of his having said he had only eighteenpence in the world.

"And that's more than he deserves," quoth Mr. North, savagely. "How dared he come back with his disgrace! How dared he show himself at my--"

A tremendous ring at the hall-bell cut short the speech. Mr. North started up with an evil cry of rage; he thought the fellow had come back again, and he hastened across the hall to drive him away, calling out to his servants that he would answer the door himself. And he opened it.

But he was wrong. The postman stood there, and put a letter into his hand.

"You are late," growled Mr. North.

"Yes, sir, the delivery is heavy to-night; and the roads are slippery; one has to walk with caution."

The letter was from Archie; the one he had supposed would have been already received. Mr. North flung it on the table in a climax of passion, and let it lie there.

The joyous peal of church bells broke upon his ear; ringing-in Christmas. Mr. North remembered how his wife, in her last Christmas, when she was sitting in that very chair close to his elbow, had remarked that she could fancy they spoke the words, "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men." There was not much peace, or goodwill either, in Mr. North's heart this evening.

He heard the children entering; taking up the letter, he thrust it into his pocket out of sight, unopened. The only wonder was, that he did not put it effectively away from sight on the fire. Spiced wine, cake, and other good things were brought in; and they sat round the red coals, talking pleasantly, quite unconscious that Mr. North's plumage had been ruffled. Millicent sat by her uncle; she put her hand on his arm, that lay on the elbow of the chair, as if she would intimate that the little rupture between them was over and forgotten.

"I wish you had gone with us, uncle; I think you would have liked it. The singing was so good, and the sermon beautiful. It only lasted ten minutes, but it was full of love and peace. He asked us how we could expect God's love to reach us if we did not love our fellow-creatures; he said this was the season for putting away evil passions and hatred, and for receiving the loving spirit of Christ into our hearts, who had done so much for us."

"What sort of a night is it?" responded Mr. North, his tones testy and impatient--as if there were something in Millicent's words that grated on his temper.

"Snowing," answered John. "We shall have a white Christmas."

Mr. North went to rest with the others; and by that time, what with the fire and the good things he had taken, was in a tolerably genial good humour. But he could not get to sleep. Down deep in his conscience something sharp was stinging and pricking and making itself inconveniently felt. Tossing and turning from side to side, it was four o'clock in the morning before he lost consciousness.

And he woke up at six. He awoke with a great horror within, and trembling without. He sat up in bed and stared out into the darkness; and only discovered by degrees that what he had gone through was a dream, and not reality.

It was a dream that shook him to the core; a vivid scene so like life; and the terror, the dismay, the remorse that overwhelmed him were so indisputably felt--felt still in all their agony, now that he was wide awake--that Mr. North for the moment verily thought it must have been a vision sent to him, like unto the visions of old in the days of the patriarchs.

He had dreamed over again the scene of the past night, or very much of it--of the return of Archibald North and his thrusting him out. He further dreamed that he had gone forth to pursue him with his anger, and went stamping up hill and down dale unable to discover him. Suddenly he found himself in a roadside field, about half-a-mile from his own home; and there, by the pond, he saw Archie lying dead, his upturned face calm and serene, pale but pleasant to look upon, as if its owner had passed to a happy rest. All in a moment the most intense remorse took possession of Mr. North as he gazed: he thought that he himself was also dead, and was about to answer for his sins. One, that looked like an angel, clad in dazzling white, stood there with a severe and pitying countenance; severe in its condemning anger, pity for him, for the man who had forfeited peace for ever. "Pardon, Lord, pardon!" he had cried out in his desperate anguish, knowing all the time that pardon was impossible; and a soft, sweet, mournful wail had sounded in his ear as the answer: "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me."

Mr. North awoke. Horror lay on his heart; drops, as of death agony, on his brow. It was some time before he could believe he was yet in this state of existence. It was much longer before he could in the least overcome the agitation that shook his soul.

In all reactions, such as this, the feelings necessarily run into exaggeration. The harshness of the previous night appeared to Mr. North in the worst possible light; a heinous crime; a sin that perhaps even yet, although the world was his still, he might never find forgiveness for. It stared him in the face in all the vivid colouring that newly-awakened remorse wears. Ay, and not only this last act, but the whole course of his doings by Archibald, in the years gone by, came rolling before him as waves in a sea of fire.

"His own brother's son! his own brother's son!" were the words that kept beating their burthen on his brain. His brother whom he had loved very dearly when they were boys together; and who, when dying, had asked him to take care of his boy Archie. How had Mr. North responded to the dying prayer? It is true he had given Archie a stool in his counting-house, and told him he would get on if he took care, but he had not held out a hand to save him from sin. He had left him to find lodgings where he could, abandoning him (he saw it now) to the perils of a London life. And when Archie went wrong (and it was nearly a matter of course that he would go wrong) and his tribulations were laid bare he had hurled him forth upon the world, unforgiven. Those tribulations of poor Archie's were as nothing to the dire tribulations that rent himself now. And the refrain kept on and on, repeating itself for ever--"His own brother's son! his brother's son!"

So certainly did Mr. North appear to have seen the dead body lying by the pond, every little particular being as clear as a witnessed scene, that, but for the sense of shame that lay in attending to a dream, he would have got up and gone to the spot. As it was, he lay still until daylight. Drawing his blind aside, he saw that the ground was covered with snow; but not a deep snow; and the sky now looked tolerably clear. Perhaps a more miserable man than Mr. North, when he dressed himself, was not to be found that day in London. God had shown the self-righteous Pharisee his sin.

The children (he was apt to call them children still, as we all do, however old they may grow) came up to kiss him as he entered the breakfast-room, Frances first. "Dear papa! I wish you a happy Christmas, and a great many of them!" And so they all followed: and Mr. North groaned inwardly by way of answer.

What a room of luxury it was! a bright and blazing fire, a sumptuous breakfast. Tea and coffee in their silver pots, savoury meats warm and cold; the pâté de foie gras, sent to his orders direct from Strasburg, forming the centre dish. All this for him, the hard, selfish man, and for his children; but where was his brother's son?

He could not eat. John asked him if he had a head-ache, and he answered yes; and when breakfast was over he turned his chair to the fire. Where was he? With only eighteenpence in his pocket, how could he find food and shelter? That the calamity he dreamed of had not happened, Mr. North felt sure of now, since no news had come, for the pond was within view of the road, and any one lying near it could not fail to be seen.

When left alone, he drew the letter from his pocket and opened it. It contained an account of Archie's life in Australia; of his shipwreck and injury on the coast of the Isle of Wight; just what he had wished to tell the previous night. "Do not, my dear uncle, think I am coming back to be a burden on you, or to disgrace you," it concluded. "Disgrace and folly, thank Heaven, I left behind in England, when that severe lesson was read to me just six years and six months ago. I have a little money (it is a good thing I did not bring it with me) lodged in the hands of some Australian merchants, who have a branch house in London, and I shall soon be earning more. They have offered me a lucrative post in their London house, which I think I shall accept. I know how justly angry you were with me when I went away; but I hope you will forgive and receive the prodigal son, and let me spend a happy Christmas-Day with you all in the dear old home. I am not quite up to travelling yet, but I must come; I have set my heart upon it. Do you remember the cake that Amy used to make to be cut after dinner on Christmas-Day, with a gold and an iron ring in it? Do you remember the hopes and fears as to who should get the rings?--and the laughing and the fun? I hope the cake is an institution still. I would not miss it this year for the world, and so I shall come--and send on this letter to prepare my way for me. Dear uncle! the random boy has become a steady man; the scapegrace has put away folly for wisdom. You will not refuse to welcome him!"

Mr. North held the letter in his hand, and gazed at its writing (that such a thing should have to be told of him!) until his tears dropped fast upon it. It was so different from what he expected; it was no begging letter, this. And he had turned him out with harsh words. Where was he?--where was he? Mr. North put on his hat and went down the road, as if to take a little walk before service. No; the pond lay there still enough, but Archibald was not lying beside it.

They went to church; and Mr. North did his best to hide from others that he could not attend to the prayers. Peace on earth and goodwill to men! What had he to do with it now? Oh, he seemed very very far from Him whom the angels heralded with those glorious words. It was as if a great gulf had sprung up between him and Heaven. He did not dare to stay sacrament, and he wondered how worthy in God's sight he must have been in the past Christmas-Days to partake of it. Not a single cry for forgiveness went up from his closed lips; his sense of sin lay too heavily upon him.

They dined at four; it had been the Christmas hour when the children were young, and it was never altered. There was no cake now; somehow sobriety in the later years had fallen upon them, and Amy, who was the cake-maker, had gone. She and her husband were to have dined there this day, but had been prevented from doing so. The only guests were two young ladies, orphans, one of whom (she was only a governess) made John North's day-dream. And he meant to tell her so, though he foresaw it would bring disappointment to his father.

It was a well-spread board: the turkey a prize; the plum-pudding rich; the wine good: but Mr. North could scarcely swallow a morsel; every mouthful seemed to choke him, every drop to chill him. Sitting alone in the little garden-room before dinner, he had lived over the interview of the previous night; he had lived over (oh, worse than all) the dream. An unpleasant superstition was beginning to creep upon him; he who had never been given to superstition in all his life: that the dream must have come to him as a foreshadowing of the truth, and that Archibald was really dead.

Perhaps he was in the pond, instead of beside it? A horror broke over Mr. North at the sudden thought, just as it had broken when awaking from the dream. An awful dread, that it was so, took possession of him; a conviction so sure that he looked upon it as a prevision. No wonder he could not eat any dinner!

But, if it had not been for his own preoccupation, he must have seen that some unusual emotion was stirring Millicent. She wore her little net cap, but the cheeks it shaded were crimson, the eyes had a sweet light of expectation; her blue silk dress was nearly as gay as the dresses of yore. Little did Mr. North suspect that Millicent had read the letter. In his troubled state he had contrived to drop it in the morning, before going to the pond; Frances had picked it up, read it, thinking it no breach of faith, and shown it to Millicent. But they kept their own counsel, and concluded that the evident perturbation of Mr. North must be connected with this.

He could not sit there. His brother's son! his own brother's son! Making some inaudible excuse of headache, of not wanting dessert, he left the table at the close of dinner, and stole out of the house by a side-door, very much as though he were going to a funeral. That Archibald was in the pond seemed to have grown into a certainty--perhaps had thrown himself in, broken-hearted, after that cruel reception--and Mr. North could not keep from it. It drew him to it with a sort of fascination, just as surely and helplessly as he felt that he was drifting further and further away from Heaven.

The snow was falling again; the air keen; and Mr. North had to walk slowly and carefully along the road because of the ice, until he turned into the field. Crunching the snow beneath his feet, he paced round and round the pond and strained his eyes into it; and saw nothing. But for the utter despair that lay upon him, the lively sense of guilt in the sight of God, a petitioning cry had gone up to Heaven that there might be no one lying beneath the waters. With the morrow he would confess to Archibald's visit and have the pond dragged. How bear the suspense until then? How bear it?

He took the field way home; the snow was less dangerous than the ice; and by-and-by dragged his weary limbs through the gate in the remote part of his own grounds, into which the fields opened. Scarcely had he done this when a groan broke upon his ear. A groan, and then another; and then something like a faint voice, speaking faint words.

"Halloa! what's that?" called out Mr. North.

"Uncle! Is it you?"

With a rush as of burning heat coursing through all his veins, Mr. North turned to the spot, and saw Archie lying in a sort of dry ditch or dyke. He was not dead: but he would surely have died, left there another night. The explanation was simple. On his way to an inn up the road, where he thought he might sleep, when driven forth the previous night, he had taken the more sheltered and well-remembered path through the grounds, in preference to the slippery highway. Awkward from his lameness, deceived by the snow, he had wandered from the path, missed his footing at the edge of the dyke, and had fallen into it. Upon essaying to rise, he found he could not do so; he believed his leg was broken. Too far off to attract attention, though he had called at intervals until strength and voice were exhausted, there he had lain ever since.

Mr. North was not of a demonstrative nature; but there may arise moments in all men's lives where emotion has more or less its way. He could not get to Archie in the dyke without stooping in the most inconvenient fashion, but he held one uplifted hand between his, clasping it tenderly, as a fond mother may clasp her little child's.

"If you can find one or two men, uncle, just to carry me to the inn and to get a surgeon?"

To the inn, indeed! No, no. Mr. North bounded along the path to his home at a faster rate than he had tried since his days of youth and slenderness. The tears were raining from his eyes at the mercy vouchsafed to him; and in the thankfulness that his sin was not irredeemable, his mouth, like the Publican's of old, could once more open: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

They carried Archie in. The surgeon was there and did what was necessary, and said he would want good nursing. Mr. North gently answered that he would be tended as his own son. Millicent was admitted then. Their hands met, their eyes looked straight into each other's, and they knew that the boy and girl love had lasted in all its brightness; that sadness and separation were now over.

"To think that he should have lain there for eighteen hours with nothing to eat!" lamented Miss North, who was of a practical turn of mind.

"But I didn't, Francis," spoke up Archie. "I had by chance a hard biscuit in my pocket, and ate it this morning."

"After all, it has been a blessed Christmas-Day," murmured Mr. North to himself that night in his bedchamber, as he reverently knelt down by his bedside. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; goodwill toward men?"