into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas
morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying
thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the
great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
thorn-crowned head of the Christ.

As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
women weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered; "and now I would have
made amends,--yea, to the half of my substance,--and he should have been
to me as a son."

There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who should
have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the people--"a
boy of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a fallen tree at
eventide--that was all his theme; but there was greatness for the future
in it. I would fain find him, and take him with me and teach him art."

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung
to her father's arm, cried aloud, "Oh, Nello, come! We have all ready
for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper
will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and
burn nuts with us all the Noel week long--yes, even to the Feast of the
Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, Nello, wake and come!"

But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and