for some years to come," said the
doctor, with exceeding earnestness.

"Well--we'll look at it," replied Aubrey; and, turning aside, they
entered the little churchyard.

"How I love this old yew-tree!" he exclaimed, as they passed under it;
"it casts a kind of tender gloom around that always makes me pensive,
not to say melancholy!" A sigh escaped him, as his eye glanced at the
family vault, which was almost in the centre of the shade, where lay his
father, three brothers, and a sister, and where, in the course of
nature, a few short years would see the precious remains of his mother
deposited. But the doctor who had hastened forward alone for a moment,
finding the church door open, called out to Mr. Aubrey, who soon stood
within the porch. It certainly required a little repairing, which Mr.
Aubrey said should be looked to immediately. "See--we're all preparing
for to-morrow," said Dr. Tatham, leading the way into the little church,
where the grizzle-headed clerk was busy decorating the old-fashioned
pulpit, reading-desk, and altar-piece, with the cheerful emblems of the
season.

"I never see these," said the doctor, taking up one of the sprigs of
mistletoe lying on a form beside them, "but I think of your own
Christmas verses, Mr. Aubrey, when you were younger and fresher than you
now are--don't you recollect them?"

"Oh--pooh!" quoth Aubrey, somewhat hastily.

"But I remember them," rejoined the doctor; and he began with great
emphasis and solemnity--

"Hail! silvery, modest mistletoe,
Wreath'd round winter's brow of snow,
Clinging so chastely, tenderly:
Hail holly, darkly, richly green,
Whose crimson berries blush between
Thy prickly foliage, modestly.
Ye winter-flowers, bloom sweet and fair,
Though Nature's garden else be bare--
Ye vernal glistening emblems, meet
To twine a Christmas coronet!"

"That will do, Doctor," interrupted Aubrey, smiling--"what a memory you
have for trifles!"

"Peggy! Peggy!--you're sadly overdoing it," said the doctor, hastily,
calling out to the sexton's wife, who was busy at work in the squire's
pew--a large square pew in the nave, near the pulpit. "Why, do you want
to hide the squire's family from the congregation? You're putting quite
a holly hedge all round!"

"Please you, sir," quoth Peggy, "I've got so much I don't know where to
put it--so, in course, I put it here!"

"Then," said the doctor, with a smile, looking round the chu