figure with outstretched arms.

There were no tapers to be seen, but northern lights shot up into the
dark blue sky, and just over the fir-tree shone a bright, bright star.

"Jupiter looks well to-night," said the old Professor in the town
observatory, as he fixed his telescope; but to the child it seemed as
the star of the Christmas Angel.

His mother had really heard him call, and now came and put him back to
bed again. And so ended the second of the Three Christmas Trees.

* * * * *

It was enough to have killed him, all his friends said; but it did not.
He lived to be a man, and--what is rarer--to keep the faith, the
simplicity, the tender-heartedness, the vivid fancy of his childhood.
He lived to see many Christmas trees "at home," in that old country
where the robins are redbreasts, and sing in winter. There a heart as
good and gentle as his own became one with his; and once he brought his
young wife across the sea to visit the place where he was born. They
stood near the little white house, and he told her the story of the
Christmas trees.

"This was when I was a child," he added.

"But that you are still," said she; and she plucked a bit of the
fir-tree and kissed it, and carried it away.

He lived to tell the story to his children, and even to his