Christmas-day had come,—­the promise of the Dawn, sometime to broaden into the full and perfect day.  At its close now, a still golden glow, like a great Peace, filled the earth and heaven, touching the dead Lot there, and the old man kneeling beside her.  He fancied that it broke from behind the dark bars of cloud in the West, thinking of the old appeal, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.”  Was He going in, yonder?  A weary man, pale, thorn-crowned, bearing the pain and hunger of men and women vile as Lot, to lay them at His Father’s feet?  Was he to go with loving heart, and do likewise?  Was that the meaning of Christmas-day?  The quiet glow grew deeper, more restful; the bell tolled:  its sound faded, solemn and low, into the quiet, as one that says in his heart, Amen.

That night, Benny, sleeping in the still twilight, stirred and smiled suddenly, as though some one had given him a happy kiss, and, half waking, cried, “Oh, Charley!  Charley!”

IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE.

  I.

  At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages
    A spirited cross of romantic and grand,
  All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages,
    And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land;
  But, ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster,
    The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf,
  And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster,
  When Middle-Age stares from one’s glass at himself!

  II.

  Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal,
    And saw the sear future through spectacles green? 
  Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all
    These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen;
  Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel
    Who’ve paid a perruquier for mending our thatch,
  Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our fate pick a quarrel,
    If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a dear scratch?

  III.

  We called it our Eden, that small patent-baker,
    When life was half moonshine and half Mary Jane;
  But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker!—­
    Bid Adam have duns and slip down a back-lane? 
  Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep coming
    With last styles of fig-leaf to Madam Eve’s bower? 
  Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls thrumming,
    Make the Patriarchs deaf at a dollar the hour?

  IV.

  As I think what I was, I sigh, Desunt nonnulla! 
    Years are creditors Sheridan’s self could not bilk;
  But then, as my boy says, “What right has a fullah
    To ask for the cream, when himself spilled the milk?”
  Perhaps when you’re older, my lad, you’ll discover
    The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,—­
  Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,—­
    That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt!