he wheel, so far as broiling the chops was
concerned. He had been up half the night, helping "the child get ready
her holiday," steadying shelves, hanging pictures, dusting books in the
library, and now meant to stand aside until the great joy of the day was
over: "only they two could share it together."

Yet he stepped to the kitchen-door and listened keenly, when, after a
long silence, he heard the door above open, and Charlotte lead her
husband into the library.

"Mounchere knows what his wife's done for him at last," he
muttered;--"and there goes in the baby," as a faint cry and a rush of
skirts followed,--with an amused laugh, and his eyes dim.

But when he heard Lotty coming presently for him, he hurried in, to
stretch himself on his bunk, and began to snore.

"It's kind in them to think of an old fellow like me; but they're best
alone. They have had a rough pull of it together, and I think this is
their first glimpse of land."

He could not wait long, however, but soon went bustling up, with the
eager glow of all his childish Christmases in his simple old face and
mind. They made ready for the day inland, he supposed; but they could
do nothing like this,--glancing in, as he trotted up stairs, at the big
fires he had built, and the bits of holly stuck around, and then out at
the sweep of barren lee-coast and the desolate sea.

"And Lotty's surprise of the house, and that blessed baby! She's a
devilish clever woman to contrive such a day for Mounchere, that's a
fact!"

The library, when he reached it, seemed the very heart and core of all
Christmas brightness. The very cold, and the hungry solitude of the
restless sea on which the window opened widely, deepened the warmth
within. The room slept in a still comfort: no fire was ever so clear, no
air so calm, no baby so content to be alive as this which lay on its
mother's breast while she walked to and fro. Her face was paler and
humbler than he had ever seen it; her husband followed her unceasingly
with his eyes,--a strange sense of almost loss in them Lufflin fancied,
idly.

Jacobus was very silent and still; he did not seem so nervous with
happiness as the Captain had fancied this opening of a new life would
make him; but there was about him a rested and hushed look,--a depth of
content which he did not believe any gain of the house or child could
give. Lufflin was awed, he knew not why.

"It is as if they had found something which Death itself could no