"I tell you all this because I want you to see how possible it may be for a man to think he is doing the very best, the only right thing, and then for perhaps an infinitely worse one to crop up. I read not long ago in a wild Western paper a story of two Englishmen who fought a lonely duel on some slope of those great mountains out there, and I think I have not slept since I read it. To have exiled my boys only that they might kill one another in foreign lands and sleep so far away from our English ground!"
Sir Humphrey's voice is failing now and his eyes grow moist A man, you see, does not easily forget his first-born.
"I tell you all this," he continues, "that it may help you to be kind and to think twice. I only thought once, and perhaps the worst may have come of it. Then I tell it to you, too, because I am an old man now, and my voice is not as strong as it was, and I can't get out to church as regularly as I used to do, and I want you all to help me to remember these absent ones and with them any of your own. There is virtue in the holding up of many hands and the lifting up of many hearts. Whether I see them again or not, that does not matter; but for the assurance that they have not harmed each other, let us pray Almighty God this night."
Ah! Sir Humphrey, there are those who would give their life for yours, but they cannot bring you that assurance to-night. Can you wait?
It is Christmas day in the morning. At least, so Almanack says, and Almanack ought to know, though he is given in those days to such ornate and emblazoned titivation of himself outwardly, putting himself in the hands of fair Mistress Kate Greenaway at the head of a mischievous throng, that he causes one to seriously consider whether his old head be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers, with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced girl next his heart--can he be relied upon? But he persists in his claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is Christmas day in the morning, although it just looks like any other day. On any other day the sun is just as bright, and the air just as keen. On other days the snow is just as white, just as deep--two feet where the constant tramping has levelled its crystalline beauty, ten, twelve, fifteen there where a great soft cloud of drift reaches halfway up the side of a small wooden house. On other days there is just as much blue in the sky, in the smoke, in the shadows of the pines, and the shadows of the icicles. On other days the house looks just as neat, just as silent, just as poor. The clearing is small, the house is small, a small terrier suns himself on a pile of wood, and the only large object apparently in existence is the tall, broad-shouldered, well-proportioned man who presently emerges from the wooden house. His ear has just caught the sound of a bell. It is not a bad bell for Muskoka, and it has a most curious effect on this white, cold silent world of snow and blue shadows. The owner of the house, who is also the builder of it, stands a few moments listening. There is only the twitter of the snowbirds to listen to, then the bell; more snowbirds, and then the bell again.