help others, he had walked in a new land; lived in a new
world; breathed a new air; been warmed by a new sun.

Wright himself met him with a cordiality so new to Livingstone and yet
so natural and unforced that Livingstone wondered whether he could have
been living in a dream all these years or whether he was in a dream
to-night.

Among the guests he suddenly came on one who made him think to-night
must be the dream.

Mrs. Wright, with glowing eyes, presented him to a lady dressed in
black, as "an old friend, she believed:" a fair, sweet-looking woman
with soft eyes and a calm mouth.

The name Mrs. Wright mentioned was "Mrs. Shepherd," but as Livingstone
looked the face was that of Catherine Trelane.

The evening was a fitting ending to a happy day--the first Livingstone
had had in many a year. Even Mrs. Shepherd's failure to give him the
opportunity he sought to talk with her could not wholly mar it.

Later, Livingstone heard Mrs. Wright begin to tell some one of his act
of the night before, in buying up a toy-shop for the children at the
hospital.

"I always believed in him," she asserted warmly.

Livingstone caught his name and, turning to Mrs. Wright, with some
embarrassment and much warmth, declared that she was mistaken, that he
had not done it.

Mrs. Wright laughed incredulously.

"I suspected it this morning when I first heard of it; but now I have
the indisputable proof."

She held up a note.

"'I think I've heard of you before,'" she laughed, with a capital
imitation of Mr. Brown's manner.

"I still deny it," insisted Livingstone, blushing, and as Mrs. Wright
still affirmed her belief, he told her the story of Santa Claus's
partner.

Insensibly, as he told it, the other voices hushed down.

He told it well; for his heart was full of the little girl who had led
him from the frozen land back to the land of light.

As he ended, from another room somewhere up-stairs, came a child's
clear voice singing,

_God west you, mer-wy gentle-men,
Let nossing you dismay;
For Jesus Chwist our Sa-wiour
Was born this ve-wy day._

Livingstone looked at Mrs. Shepherd.

She was standing under the long evergreen festoons just where they met
and formed a sort of verdant archway. Two of the children of the house,
attracted by Livingstone's story, had come and pressed against her as
they listened with interested faces, and she had put her arms about them
and drawn their curly heads close to