but has been remembered, and things are on a grander scale than usual.
The candles build famously, set in the chimney candelabra; the logs
are all of the biggest, and as for the Yule himself, he is a
veritable Brobdignag; the staircases drop flowers, and holly and
mistletoe hang all about. Everything shines, and gleams, and glows.
There is to be a boar's head, with, no lack of mustard and minstrelsy,
and nothing eatable or drinkable that pertains to Christmas will be
wanting. Carols, and waits, and contended tenants; merry chimes and
clinking glasses; twanging fiddles and the rush down the middle--
nothing is spared and nobody is forgotten. So the hour draws on, the
guests pull through the dreary day (for as I have said before,
everything on Christmas day gives place to the dinner), and at last
the dinner becomes an absolute fact, something to be apprehended,
sat down to, and finally eaten. It _is_ eaten, and everyone has come
into the long hall, at one end of which the Yule burns. There is
merry talk, and it is easier now for the captain to devote himself
to the girls, having left the dinner behind; there is talk, too, of
a little wonder at the gorgeousness of the dinner, for Sir Humphrey
has not been so gay for years, yes, just twenty years, when it is
evident that Sir Humphrey is going to make a speech. He stands alone
in front of the fire, and this is what he says. If you want to know
what he looks like, you may think of an old man who is a gentleman,
white-haired, noble and resolute, but with a sense of broken
fortunes and deferred hopes upon him.

"I have been young and now am old," says Sir Humphrey, "and I have
never yet seen the house, known the family, or penetrated the life
where there did not exist some trouble or some secret. Therefore, if
I refer to-night to the skeleton in my own house," he continues,
with a slight shudder, "I only do what perhaps each individual