up at Canning, color coming back
into her cheek, her breast rising and falling. The sight of him, all to
herself again, was more than balm to a wound, more than harbors to
storm-swept mariners.

"Is there _any_ rest for the weary!" she whispered. "Oh, me! Let's _go
home,_ right after this!"

Canning, who also wore a faint air of persecution for righteousness'
sake, took her gloved hand, and she did not withdraw it.

"Do you know," he answered, with a little smile, "that's the cleverest
thing I've heard said to-night...."

"We can have a little party all to ourselves," said Carlisle, rather
tremulously. "It's been so _horrid_ to-night...."

* * * * *

They opened the back door to let the Old Year out. They flung wide the
front doors to let the New Year in. They lowered all lights to the
dimness of obsequies. The gay company, standing, ranged the long room in
a ghostly half-light, and old Mr. Beirne, from his immemorial post
between the tall windows, read from a great book "The Dying Year," in a
voice as slow and solemn as he could make it. The stately lines brought
home with a certain force, rather emphasized by the festive contrast,
the certain passing of all mundane things. Here was another milestone
left behind, and you and I would pass this way no more. Over the long
loose dim ring, your eye fell upon a familiar and friendly face, fallen
suddenly a little sad; and memory stirred of the many times you had
looked at that face, and with it wonder of what another year might bring
to you two. Would you stand here like this, friends good and true, with
hearts tuned to the same feeling, a twelvemonth from to-night? There was
felt a quick, childlike impulse for hands all round and such a singing
of "Auld Lang Syne" as would have brought the police on the run.

By long practice and the most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr.
Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the
slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the
city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and
penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), to say nothing of many an
inebriated human voice, hailed in a roaring diapason the birth of a new
year. At Mr. Beirne's the outer tumult was echoed in the manner of the
well-bred. The doors were shut, with the infant inside; the lights flew
up; glasses clinked, merry healths were pledged, new fealties sworn by
look alone.