e top. Still no bell was to be seen.

"Faith," said the Captain, halting, ashamed of the clanking of his
boots, "this is a ghostly beginning!"

He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, looking
down at him, stood the French officer--the officer whose picture he had
carried in his mind so long and so far. Compared with the original, at
last--in every lineament how like it was!

He moved and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heard his steps
coming quickly down into the hall. He entered through an archway. There
was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a look as it had worn
in that fatal moment.

Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? Enchanted to receive him!

"He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he did not take
such a note of my face, that day, as I took of his," thought Captain
Richard Doubledick. "How shall I tell him?"

"You were at Waterloo," said the French officer.

"I was," said Captain Richard Doubledick. "And at Badajos."

Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat
down to consider. What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At that
time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between English
and French officers arising out of the recent war; and these duels, and
how to avoid this officer's hospitality, were the uppermost thought in
Captain Richard Doubledick's mind.

"His mother, above all," the Captain thought. "How shall I tell _her_?"

"Spirit of my departed friend," said he, "is it through thee these
better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown me, all
the way I have drawn to meet this man, the blessings of the altered
time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my
angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that this man did his
duty as thou didst,--and as I did, through thy guidance, which has
wholly saved me here on earth,--and that he did no more?"

He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when he rose up,
made the second strong resolution in his life,--that neither to the
French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any
soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what only he
knew. And when he touched that French officer's glass with his own, that
day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the Divine
Forgiver of Injuries.

THE LEGEND OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE.

Most children have seen a C