or an exhalation from a stagnant heart. Now and then, however,
during the year that ensued, these melancholy people caught glimpses
of one another, transient, indeed, but enough to prove that they
walked the earth with the ordinary allotment of reality. Sometimes
a pair of them came face to face, while stealing through the evening
twilight, enveloped in their sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually
met in churchyards. Once, also, it happened that two of the dismal
banqueters mutually started at recognizing each other in the noonday
sunshine of a crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray.
Doubtless they wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad at
noonday too.

But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these
Christmas guests into the bustling world, they were sure to
encounter the young man who had so unaccountably been admitted to
the festival. They saw him among the gay and fortunate; they caught
the sunny sparkle of his eye; they heard the light and careless
tones of his voice, and muttered to themselves with such indignation
as only the aristocracy of wretchedness could kindle, "The traitor!
The vile impostor! Providence, in its own good time, may give him a
right to feast among us!" But the young man's unabashed eye dwelt
upon their gloomy figures as they passed him, seeming to say,
perchance with somewhat of a sneer, "First, know my secret then,
measure your claims with mine!"

The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry Christmas
round again, with glad and solemn worship in the churches, and
sports, games, festivals, and everywhere the bright face of Joy
beside the household fire. Again likewise the hall, with its
curtains of dusky purple, was illuminated by the death-torches