"How wonderfully tranquil it all is here. See, it is beginning to snow. White and drifting feathers of peace, I'm sure! Oh, Aunt Cheerful," she said with a little sigh, "how much I envy you!"

"Envy me, Lady Ariel?"

"Yes. Your cottage and your pines and the quiet of this dear old lane. Somehow I have grown to love it all! And then all your friends here in Westowe."

"But surely, child, you too have friends!"

"Not so sincere and loyal as yours, Aunt Cheerful. And then you have Lord Chesterfield and your—your son in the West and I have no one."

"No one!"

"No one!" Jean repeated. "Never a kinsman even, save a nomadic uncle with a strain of gipsy blood in his veins and even he faded out of my life like all the others years ago. It—it is a very odd thing, Aunt Cheerful, to be quite alone, and sometimes it is very, very lonely."

"Oh, my dear Lady Ariel!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful in real distress. "I am so sorry!" For an impetuous instant a question seemed to hover upon her lips, then with a quick movement of decision she was tap-tapping about the room, lighting the lamp and drawing the shades.

"Come, come, Lady Ariel!" she exclaimed, smiling. "You're not in your usual good spirits to-night! We'll set the Emperor to singing and have our tea!"

But Jean's depression lingered and so it was that when Lord Chesterfield peered into her shadowy corner by the fire that night, her chair was empty.

"Good evening, Lady Cheerful!" he said, disappointment in his voice.

"Why, good evening, Lord Chesterfield. Dear, dear! your Lordship's cap is full of snow!"

"It is nothing, madam, I assure you! I trust your Ladyship is well?"

"Very well indeed."

"And the Lady Ariel?"

"Well"—Aunt Cheerful hesitated—"a little quiet and tired, I should say. She has gone up to bed."

Into Lord Chesterfield's eyes leaped a sudden excitement.

"A 'normous box came by express," he burst forth breathlessly, "and it was full up of spensive, glittery Christmas things for the chapel tree and—and—a letter came from a candy man and he said a strange lady'd bought and paid for s'ficient candy and oranges and—and everything for mos' everybody in Westowe to be delivered at the Sunday School day before Christmas and—and presents came on ahead in a box 'cause they won't spoil waitin' and—and nobody knows—"

"Oh, my dear Lord Chesterfield," broke in Aunt Cheerful in alarm, "do, do, my dear boy, take a breath!"

"Who sent 'em!" finished Lord Chesterfield. "And Grandmother Radcliffe she reckons maybe Lady Ariel is a princess in disguise and she sent 'em."

"A princess in disguise!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful. "Dear, dear, that would be strange!"

"And maybe," went on Lord Chesterfield in growing excitement, "maybe your Ladyship will rec'lect how my dog medicines were gettin' pretty low and owin' to er—to—er—" His Lordship cleared his throat with a prodigious "Hum!—I beg your Ladyship's pardon but—er—were financial embarrassments just the words you told me that time?"

"Financial embarrassment!" nodded Aunt Cheerful gravely.

"Owing to my financial embarrassments I couldn't buy more till after Christmas and—and this morning, ma'am, there was an express package for me with witch-hazel and arnica and sponges and liniments and bandages and mos' a reg'lar doctor's outfit in it. Mos' likely I'll 'speriment on Carlo's rheumatism to-night with a new liniment."

"Now I do wonder," mused Aunt Cheerful absently, "if your mysterious friend could possibly be the one who keeps my garden so trim and chops my kindlings. Dear, dear! What a very strange and mysterious place Westowe has become!"

Lord Chesterfield's fine little face colored hotly.

"I hardly think they are the same," he owned honestly; then, quick contrition in his eyes, he vaulted lightly over the window sill and drew a letter from his pocket. "Oh, Lady Cheerful," he apologized, "I do beg your Ladyship's pardon. Fact is, I—I mos' forgot your letter!"

"Why, bless your heart, child," exclaimed Aunt Cheerful warmly, "who wouldn't forget a letter with such a magic box on his mind! Your Lordship will pardon me if I read it this very minute? It's from my son!" And Lord Chesterfield bowed a courtly acquiescence.

So with swift color in her cheeks, Aunt Cheerful read, but as she read her hand began to tremble and suddenly the letter fluttered unheeded to the floor and a great tear rolled slowly down her face and splashed on the white woolen gown. And even as he watched, his grave little face perturbed, the mantle of formal courtesy vanished and Lord Chesterfield sprang forward, a kindly little lad alive with sympathy.

"Oh, Aunt Cheerful," he blurted boyishly, "I'm awfully sorry!"

But with a muffled sob Aunt Cheerful patted his arm, taking refuge in the words of the game they played.

"It—it is nothing at all, Lord Chesterfield, I assure you!" she said bravely.

"My busy son writes me that—that after all he can not come for Christmas."

But even as she bent to regain the letter, she began trembling and crying again so pitifully that Lord Chesterfield's face colored darkly and for all he bit his lips like the brave little fighter he was at all times, still a great sob welled up in his own throat and his eyes grew gentle. And presently in the quiet, Aunt Cheerful felt the diffident touch of a boyish hand upon her shoulder and looking up met the eyes of the little hermit, oddly resolute for all their sympathy.

"Aunt Cheerful," said he firmly, "I—I'm 'fraid I'd better stay here all night. Fact is," with a squaring of chin and shoulders, "I feel that you'd better have a man in the house."

But Aunt Cheerful's wan smile bore in it something resolute of her old cheeriness.

"Oh, my dear boy," she exclaimed gratefully, "it is more than good of you to offer, but you must remember poor Carlo's rheumatism and the new liniment and all the responsibilities of your bachelor life. And anyway I'm quite alright now. Silly old women have such spells."

So presently, after a deal of urging, Lord Chesterfield departed and Aunt Cheerful went tap! tap! tapping softly out into the kitchen to mix her bread. And even as she worked, a perturbed little sentinel with a round boyish face peered furtively in at the kitchen window, loath to leave the cottage among the pines when sorrow lay upon it.

Now as Aunt Cheerful worked she began to sing, and the song was one that had often bolstered her waning courage before. And surely in the very words of it lay the fragrance of her own resourceful cheeriness.

V

In the single room of his shanty Lord Chesterfield lit his lamp, and truly light never fell upon a stranger boyhood shelter. For the hermit's rude bed was neatly made and the floor as neatly swept, his battered cookstove polished and the medicine bottles upon his rickety table ranged in a careful row. And once the busy hermit had raked his fire into a bright and warming glow, for all its lonely rattling when the wind blew, the river shanty was as snug and neat a place as one might find.

Now as Lord Chesterfield bustled energetically about the fire, there came a whining and a scratching at the shanty door and, as he opened it, a huge dog limped slowly in with a joyous bark of greeting. With ready affection in his eyes, the hermit bent and patted the shaggy brown head of his visitor, for this was Carlo, the toll-gate keeper's old and rheumatic pensioner, who nightly limped up the tow-path to be properly bathed and petted. And the dialogue of the gallant Doctor and his patient-in-chief barely varied.

"Good evening, Carlo!" (very brisk and professional).

A joyous bark.

"And how is the rheumatism to-night?"

A very great wagging of a very bushy tail but a bark of considerable uncertainty.

"Hum! Well, well, we'll have to attend to that. Step right over this way if you please!" And the Doctor, frowning portentously, bathed Carlo's flank ever so gently, with now and then a kindly word of reassurance. These medical attentions properly completed, Carlo, whose sense of professional etiquette was none too keen, fell to nosing frankly about the hut until he found a certain plate of scraps, and having neatly attended to this single spot of disorder, he limped back to the hermit and suggestively lowered his handsome head. Whereupon the Doctor removed a very small package tied to his collar and grandly bowed his patient to the door.

A blast of wind rattled the shanty as Carlo departed. On tiptoe the hermit locked the door, carefully drew the shades, and with infinite caution removed a plank from the floor. Very furtively he drew forth a dirty canvas bag, pitifully small for all its pleasant clink and unwrapped Carlo's package, a coin which Carlo's kindly master nightly sent for Carlo's fee. Then together with such coins as he could spare from the day's proceeds this provident little hermit hid them all away again in the canvas bag beneath the plank, for this was the hidden hoard that Lord Chesterfield fancied would one day make him a very great doctor.

And as the final task of the busy evening, the hermit wrote a letter.

"December 18th.

"Dear Mr. Robert Loring:

"She got your letter and cried and she most alwus never cries so shaky, Aunt Cheerful Loring I mean. Oh, please do come! She feels so awful bad and once when I was awful sick this winter she lived three days in this old shanty here with me and sat up all night account of medacines and no other bed and she read me every day bout Lord Chesterfield and I'd like to do something big for her she's so awful brave and so awful lame. Sometimes like to-night when I looked in the winda she sings to keep her spirits up. Oh, please, please Mr. Loring, can't we maybe surprise her for Christmas? I do most everything I can for her but just one thing you could do would be more than all. Five years is awful long. Most likely you won't know who I am unless she wrote. She calls me Lord Chesterfield and lots of folks here call me Doc and the hermut but, sir, I have the honer to sine myself—

"Norman Varian."

For so Lord Chesterfield fancied his illustrious namesake might finish such a letter.

And as he sealed the letter, the boy looked wistfully up at a ragged photograph of his dead father tacked carefully above the table and very slowly he read aloud the single line of writing beneath it.

"Always remember, little son," it read, "that first of all, though you've seen hard times, you're a gentleman!"

And suddenly Lord Chesterfield's brave little head went forward upon his hands with a choking sob, for after all he was only a proud and lonely little bachelor who had greatly loved his father.

So the little hermit's letter went forth upon a Christmas mission to come to its final goal in a luxurious suite of offices in Denver on the desk of Robert Loring. And Robert Loring read the eloquent plea with unwonted color in his face and a startled shame in his fine eyes, for, unconsciously vivid, the boy's letter had strikingly bared the inner life of his brave and cheerful mother.

"Five years!" said Robert Loring aghast. "It can't be!"

But swiftly reviewing the years crowded with activity he knew that the little hermit had written the truth, and he flushed again. For the thought of his mother's lonely life in Pine Tree Lane subtly dwarfed the urgent calls of effort and ambition which had kept him from her. A giant hand of rebuke indeed that Lord Chesterfield had wielded.

So, swiftly over the night wires went a telegram to one Norman Varian, and even as Robert Loring wrote the lad's name, he stared at it very thoughtfully.

VI

And up through the snow-sparkle of the steep moon-lit path to the chapel on the hill climbed Aunt Cheerful Loring, helped ever so gently upward by the sturdy arm of gallant Lord Chesterfield. Snow-sparkle and a Christmas moon and the sound of the chapel organ through the lighted windows above! What wonder that all of it lured Aunt Cheerful to climb as she had never climbed before, with scarcely a thought for the poor lame foot.

"Not so fast, Lady Cheerful!" begged the boy gently.

"But, my dear Lord Chesterfield," urged Aunt Cheerful with a brisk tap! tap! of her crutch, "I can not possibly miss any of this wonderful Christmas celebration for which you have worked so busily and—hear! already they are singing the Christmas hymn!"

Down through the cold air from the moonlit chapel above came the sound of a reverent chorus chanting "Holy Night," and Lord Chesterfield's brown eyes glowed strangely.

"It—it is only the song service they have beforehand," he said re-assuringly, "for—for to-night, Aunt Cheerful," he added with smothered excitement, "they can't begin without me!"

Pine and holly and tinsel and gifts, so they loomed ahead as Lord Chesterfield led his honored lady to her pew and bent over her with a flame of color in his smooth, young cheeks.

"Aunt Cheerful," he stammered excitedly, "I—I beg your Ladyship's pardon but—but will you please 'scuse me now. I—I've got a mos' important errand!"

Primly the hermit had climbed the chapel hill with his lady, but now with never a backward look he raced madly down the path and through the village to the railroad station, a flushed and panting youngster trembling with excitement. Far below where rails and moonlit sky merged appeared a light and upon its steadily growing disk Lord Chesterfield fixed his eyes in a fever of fascination. Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug! How desperately slow it crept up through the snow-silver of the valley! And how wildly the hermit's glowing heart pounded away beneath his Sunday suit!

On came the train at last and halted, and presently Lord Chesterfield was hurrying excitedly down the platform toward a man, young and tall, whose handsome eyes were surely of a most familiar blue. Gravely the little hermit raised his cap and bowed.

"Good evening!" he ventured sturdily "Are you—are you Mr. Robert Loring?"

"Robert Loring, indeed!" answered the young man gravely; "and very much at your service." And his eyes were gentle as he held out his hand. "And you, I take it, are Lord Chesterfield himself. Well, sir, I'm glad to know you."

Now there was such an earnest ring of respect and deference in this young man's pleasant voice that Lord Chesterfield colored with pleasure. So, very gravely, these two shook hands and, still finely punctilious, the little hermit cleared his throat.

"May I," he queried politely—"may I—er—take you to my—er—bachelor 'partments for something to eat first?"

Robert Loring's keen eyes traveled over the manly figure of his little friend with never a smile.

"Let me thank your Lordship," he said gratefully, "but I've already dined. From now on, sir, my time is yours."

Lord Chesterfield grasped his arm in a spasm of excitement.

"Oh, sir, Mr. Robert," he burst forth in great relief, "I am so awful glad, for there ain't a single minute to lose. Bill Flittergill, sir, he went and bust his arm a while back and oh, sir, will you come to the chapel and take his place and dress up in the Santa Claus suit and—give the presents and—and when I say like this—'Lord Chesterfield's present to Aunt Cheerful Loring with his respects!' will you just—just take off your mask when she comes up and oh—sir, will you?"

And Robert Loring rested one hand very gently on the boy's shoulder.

"Old chap," he said huskily, "I want you to understand that I leave everything, absolutely everything to you. I've managed things long enough and it seems to me I've made a most astonishing mess of it!"

So that night in Westowe Chapel a broad-shouldered Kris Kringle dispensed the Christmas gifts as the hermit directed until the glittering tree was fairly stripped and the magic box quite empty, and at last with a hoarse little quaver in his voice, Lord Chesterfield came to the final name upon his list.

"Lord Chesterfield's present to Aunt Cheerful Loring!" he announced with a gulp, and, coloring with pleasure, Aunt Cheerful came hurrying up the aisle with a brisk tap! tap! of her crutch.

"Now, oh, now, Mr. Robert!" prompted Kris Kringle's agitated helper. So with a hand that visibly shook, Robert Loring removed his beard and mask and stepped from the Christmas shadow of the pine boughs.

For a tense instant Aunt Cheerful stared, stared at the smiling face of her big and gallant son with eyes so wild and startled that she seemed but a pitiful little crippled ghost swaying weakly upon her crutch, then the ever-busy crutch fell unheeded to the floor and Aunt Cheerful Loring fell sobbing to her knees, one trembling out-stretched hand clutching desperately at the ragged fur on Kris Kringle's coat as if to keep the dear apparition from fading away again before her very eyes.

"Oh, Robert, oh, my dear boy!" she cried incoherently. "It—it was the Christmas pines as the gipsy said—" then in the hush that spread electrically over the little chapel, she began to shake and sob and laugh so queerly that Lord Chesterfield leaped to her side. But Robert Loring, with misty eyes, bent and gently raised his mother to her feet.

"Brave, brave little mother!" he said huskily. "I did not know."

Somewhere in the tear-dimmed host of friends within the chapel, a kindly voice in a wave of quick consideration for the tearful little cripple clinging so pitifully to her son, struck up the Christmas hymn and once more, that eventful Christmas Eve, the strains of "Holy Night" went sweeping out from the hill chapel over the moonlit snow.

VII

"My maid, Celeste, has forwarded to me your letter," she wrote, "and now when I know that I must write you where I am and why I have come here, that at last I must answer your insistent question, oh, Robert!—it is very hard indeed.

"How mockingly to-night your words are ringing in my ears!

"'And so,' you said that memorable night, 'it is but right for me to tell you now, Jean, that with marriage, if you grant me that happiness, my brave and lonely little mother comes back into my home-life for all time!'

"Very handsome and very resolute you looked, but Robert, I wonder if you guessed what a queer resentful chill crept into my selfish heart at your words. Like a grim leper stalking at my side rose the thought that once more Life was ironically robbing me of its finest and sweetest. Oh, Robert, how can I write you now that I did not want your mother in my home and life, intruding upon the first happiness of my lonely life—that I wanted only you!

"I asked you to wait without seeing me again until I should write you and with Celeste's connivance I slipped away in the night, bent upon the maddest, crudest whim that ever selfish heart devised. For I came to the little village you had so often described—to Westowe—and I came—yes, I must write it all crude and narrow as it is—to appraise, to coldly analyze and dissect—your mother, to see if I deemed her worthy a place in my home and my new life with you! And out of the rain and dark, Fate's twinkling light lured me to her very door!

"For, Robert, I am here in the dear peace and quiet of this pine-scented lane, unknown, unquestioned, trusted as I surely do not deserve, lingering on day by day with this dear, brave little mother of yours, and now I know that it is I who am not worthy, that my very quest was a profanation that makes my cheeks burn with the utter shame of it. And something has stirred in my lonely heart at the sight of her that has been hushed since early childhood. So often these days I find myself repeating those wonderful words of Lowell's:

"So the leper of selfish resentment no longer crouches at my side. Instead there is something so shining and beautiful that I grow afraid. 'In many climes without avail!' And even that is I, Egypt and India and Syria and the uttermost parts of the world, so in a mad search for life I have gone and gone again and here in the heart of the pines I have found life and peace and love, the Holy Grail.

"After all, Robert, how much of life's heart-glow I have been denied until now. Those black and bitter childhood days, the under-current of resentment because the only heir to the Varian millions was not a boy, the tearless agony of the nights when first divorce and later death took my father and mother out of my life and I cried for sisters, for brothers, for cousins, for anything in God's world to give some touch of humanness to my barren life—such is my cycle of memory. I wonder if you can guess the utter desolation that comes with the knowledge that you are quite alone with never a single blood-tie to warm the ice about your heart.

"But, now, I have worked with my hands. I have scrubbed and ironed and baked, I have lived for another besides myself, I have watched the lives of two whose brave and cheerful compassion for each other bears in it the touch of holiness and I have come to know a wee soldier whose sturdiness on life's firing line, like that of your mother, has shamed me again and again. Such a wonderfully courteous little lad he is, Robert, with his hermit hut and his buried savings and his dreams of becoming a very great doctor. And some day when I can devise a way of breaking through the wall of his pride, I am going to make him what he dreams. Robert, I think the ice is melting around my heart at last. I am gaining a broader vision.

"Lady Ariel—it is so Aunt Cheerful calls me. Oh, Robert, how can I go to her and tell her why I came, how I linger here day by day hoping for courage to ask her pardon. And it has grown even harder now that I know that she would have the kind and beautiful wife of her son like Lady Ariel, that she has whimsically chosen to see in me her fanciful Lady of the Fireglow garbed wondrously in flame-colored satin! For how can I let her glimpse the cruel canker that lay in the heart of the daughter of her dreams. On the bed as I write lies a gown of 'flame-colored satin' and the Varian jewels, and this moonlit Christmas Eve when she comes from the chapel, I shall go to her as she has dreamed of me and on my knees I shall beg her forgiveness and a place in the beautiful shrine of her brave and cheerful heart.

"Oh, Robert, pray for me that I may not hurt her!"

Very thoughtfully Jean sealed the letter and directed it to Robert Loring, then she began a brisk pilgrimage about the quiet house. Holly and mistletoe and Christmas wreaths came mysteriously to light from a box beneath the Lady Ariel's bed, and soon the cottage among the pines smiled cheerfully through a Christmas flare of pine and holly. For Aunt Cheerful's Christmas interest had somehow waned after Robert's letter, and at the hermit's diffident suggestion, Lady Ariel had taken the pleasant task upon herself.

And when the deft and busy decorator had finished her work, she slipped into her cloak and went hurrying through the village toward the covered bridge. Very lonely and small the hermit's hut in the moonlight and with a catch in her throat, Jean took the rusty key from the nail and entered. Only Aunt Cheerful and Lady Ariel knew the secret of the buried savings. So to-night Jean hurriedly searched the hermit's floor for a certain creaking board, and when at last she drew forth the pitiful little canvas bag, she stuffed it full of greenbacks.

The chill silver of the winter moonlight flooded brightly through the open door, haloing the figure of the girl upon her knees in the desolate shanty and flashing full upon the ragged photograph above the table. So as Jean turned, her startled eyes rested directly upon the features of the hermit's father, and the girl stared aghast, her face white in the moonlight. For the face was the face of her nomad Uncle whose life had been irrevocably marred by the cruelty of her father. And as Jean stared, somewhere within her the ice melted for all time. Starved and eager strands of kinsmanship went flying out to twine hungrily about the gallant heart of Lord Chesterfield, and there upon her knees in the river shack, the heiress to the Varian millions fell to sobbing and praying incoherently for the love of her little cousin. And even as she prayed, faintly over the village came the echo of the Christmas hymn.

VIII

"I beg your pardon," said Robert Loring, "but my mother bade me tell the Lady Ariel that she has gone with Hiram Scudder to carry the chapel's Christmas gifts to the poor of Westowe."

But oddly enough there was no answer at all from the white-aproned worker in his mother's kitchen, moreover she did not even turn her head and a little puzzled, Robert Loring raised his voice.

"I beg your pardon," he began again and halted—for Lady Ariel had turned as he spoke with a wistful smile of apology about her lips.

Unutterable astonishment flamed up in Robert Loring's eyes, but he did not speak, for there was something in Jean's face that somehow made the power of words depart. In a queer silence they faced each other, Robert Loring's memory flashing back to the night at the opera when he had first seen this girl before him in the white and silver of trailing satin, when the beautiful chill and bitterness of her eyes had left their imprint upon his soul for eternity. There were no shadows in her eyes to-night; and smoothing away the lines of soul-rebellion, a new strength and sweetness lay wistfully about her mouth. Ruffled hair and toil-marked hands! With a sudden bound, Robert Loring caught the girl's hands within his own.

"Oh, Jean, Jean!" he cried wonderingly, "what does it all mean? Celeste would not tell me where you had gone." But Jean slipped from his arms with a laugh that was half a sob.

"Oh, no! no! Robert," she said bravely, "you must read your letter first and know me for what I am."

So by the kitchen window, Robert Loring read his letter and when he finished his eyes were very thoughtful.

"Jean, dear," he said gently, "there is much for which you and I must one day beg my little mother's pardon but surely you have not erred so much as I."

By the fireglow with the Emperor humming a festive prediction of tea for the Christmas supper, Robert Loring heard the story of Lady Ariel's whimsical journey and its climax in the hermit's hut, but when the jingle of sleigh-bells outside announced the halting of Hiram Scudder's sleigh Jean went flying happily from the room and up the stairs. With a tap! tap! tapping! of the crutch—never so brisk and cheerful as to-night, Aunt Cheerful presently entered upon the arm of the gallant hermit.

"Oh, Robert, my dear boy!" she exclaimed happily. "How very like my dear Lady Ariel to surprise me with all this glow of holly and the Christmas wreaths. You can not imagine how cheerily they smiled at me through the pines! And dear me, bless the child's heart, the table is set for a little supper and the Emperor singing a Christmas hymn. Never, never was there such another Christmas since the world began."

But Robert Loring drew his mother to a seat by the fire and gently began to tell her something of the wife who was to come at last into his mother's life and his own, and somehow as he talked Aunt Cheerful grew very quiet and a little sad and presently she turned quite around that she might not look into the fireglow for since Lady Ariel's coming she had made wistful plans of her own about Son Robert's wife and the fireglow mocked her with the impotency of them all. And when a quick step on the stairway betokened the return of Lady Ariel, a great tear rolled slowly down Aunt Cheerful's face and turning she fell back in her chair with a cry of awe.

For surely so radiant a Christmas vision never stood framed in a holly-crowned doorway before. Flame-colored satin trailed about the Lady Ariel's slender figure; diamonds flashed about her throat and hair. And as she gasped and stared, first at the eloquent eyes of her son and then at the Christmas vision in the doorway, Aunt Cheerful Loring knew the truth. With a wild tapping of her crutch she went flying swiftly across the quiet room.

"Oh, my beautiful Lady of the Fireglow!" she cried, sobbing for the very joy of it all. "My dear, dear Lady Ariel!"

And Lord Chesterfield, kindly little courtier that he was, began briskly to poke the fire that he might not be an outside witness to this Christmas scene of joy and reunion, but a great loneliness swept over him and all the while he was stirring up the sleepy swashbuckler in the fire he was swallowing manfully. So in his tearful abstraction the hermit did not know that Jean's eyes were full upon him or that with a soft rustle of the flame-colored satin she had crossed the room and seated herself beside him.

"Lord Chesterfield," said Jean gently, "all these wonderful days you have not once told me your Lordship's name."

"Why, why, no, Lady Ariel," stammered the boy in quick apology, "I haven't. I do beg your Ladyship's pardon. It is Norman Varian."

"Norman Varian!" repeated Jean. "It is a very familiar name, your Lordship."

Smiling Lady Ariel slipped a paper into the hermit's hand. And these were the very astonishing words the paper bore:

"I hereby pledge myself by the memory of my dead uncle, Norman Varian, to make of my brave little cousin a gentleman and a scholar and a very great Doctor.

"Christmas eve.                                              Jean Varian."

And when Lord Chesterfield reached the familiar surname at the end, he knew why Lady Ariel's beautiful face had haunted his dreams—it was a face very like the face of his dead father; moreover he knew why the look in the girl's gray eyes had so hurt his throat for, unlike his own, they were Varian eyes. And as the brave little hermit slowly came to realize that in this lonely world he was not quite alone, that here were kindly eyes that had the right of kinsmanship to watch over his sturdy climb to manhood, his pride and independence ruthlessly deserted him and he dropped on his knees and buried his face in Jean's lap, a forlorn little lad unnerved at the end of a gallant fight.

"Oh, Cousin Jean," he blurted with a great sob, "I been so awful lonely 'specially when the wind blew nights and I missed daddy so and—and the canvas bag's been fillin' so awful slow and mos' every rain there was a new leak—"

Jean stroked her cousin's hair with a hand that trembled a little.

Now in the silence that fell over the room, the wrathful Emperor burst suddenly into a perfect bubble of ferocity. He steamed and he hissed and he bubbled and grumbled, he fumed at the mouth and rattled his helmet and tossed his plume of steam about in an imperial rage, for when had royalty been so persistently ignored as on this Christmas Eve! And presently as the four sat down to the Christmas supper, through the moonlit pines came the sound of the chapel bell ringing in a Christmas morning.