active imagination of the
timid child peoples with phantom shapes, grotesque and horrible--forms
made unnaturally visible by their own light, that mouth and leer, and
stretch out distorted arms to seize him, whose appalling presence fills
the room from floor to ceiling, and which eddy and circle around him in
horrid demon dances, whirling gradually nearer and nearer, until myriads
of hideous faces are thrust close to his own, or grin above him, while
he chokes for breath--forms that make the cold sweat stand on his baby
forehead, and freeze the blood in his veins, that he watches night after
night, with his blue eyes starting from their sockets and his hair
standing on end, that make of the desolate nighttime a dread and a
horror! And there is no one to kneel beside his lonely bed and tell the
frightened child, sick with dread, that there are no such things as
odious black dwarfs, who drag young children off to dark and dismal
dungeons by the hair of their head, nor great giants, who grow always
bigger as you look at them, and who eat up, at a mouthful, little boys
who cry in the dark. No tender mother bends low with all but divine
compassion to listen to his little sorrows, or soothe his childish
fears--to teach him his simple prayers, or tell him sweet stories of a
little child like himself, before whose lowly cradle wise men bowed as
at a shrine, and to do whom reverence shining ones came from a
far-distant country. There is no one to pillow his curly head upon a
loving bosom, and lull him to sleep with quaint old lullabies. Harry is
worse than motherless.

So on the night in question, as on all other nights preceding, poor
Harry, worn out with fright and weariness, is dropping to sleep from
sheer exhaustion, closing his swollen eyes in troubled slumber, when,
half unconsciously turning his curly head upon the pillow to find a dry
place for the wet cheek to rest against, something bright and shining
makes long lines of light in the tears still wet on Harry's lashes, and
wakes him up again.

Such a bright, beautiful star it is. One that has been slowly rising,
climbing the blue outside, until it reaches a break in the foliage of
the tree before the window, and shines straight into Harry's eyes.
Something of that strange solemnity that fills minds of a maturer growth
when gazing on the starry heavens, hushes that baby's soul into
reverence as he looks upon it. The terrible shapes melt away into the
gloom, he feels n