ledgment of your courageous efforts to save George's life."

Then there

was a pause-rather an awkward pause-and Frieda broke it. "Shall I get my hat and come with you to see them all?" she said. "Won't they be glad to hear about Uncle John's legacy, David?"

His name uttered by her seemed to rouse him.

"You must not come till you have heard my story; it will be very kind if you can listen to it patiently; it won't take very long to tell. But it would not be right to let you come, without telling it first."

Surely no tale of love was ever better told, with all the dignity of his young man. hood, with no assumption or self-assertion, and yet with a touching and pathetic simplicity as he went over all the disadvantages for her which must be taken into account.

"Those three years," he said, "have made me much older than three ordinary years of a man's life would have done; thus I think the small disparity between us is in reality done away with. I am to all intents and purposes much older than you are. This noble legacy of your uncle's will give me all I need now, and more than all when once I have taken a degree. I am not afraid of the future, for I think I have a moderate chance of success. The fact remains, however, that I am lame, and can never hope to be anything else. It is for you, Frieda, to put this and all my many shortcomings in the balance, with a love that is a very part of my being, which dates back to a twilight walk over the Downs long ago, which has strengthened from that time, and is, I think, built on a sure foundation: for I have taken it where I take all my best things, and I feel God has blessed it for me, whether you come to me or whether you cannot come as my wife."

Frieda had risen, and stood with her hands clasped, gazing at the face which his great love for her had illuminated and made beautiful. She stood, as many before her have stood, on the brink of a great change

the change which sometimes, though rarely, touches the friendship and sisterly affection of a true woman into love. The entire revulsion of feeling is always a shock that is half pain and half joy. If Frieda had seen David every day in the closeness of near neighbourhood, as in times past, for three years, it might have been different. Then, indeed, some word or look might and probably would have betrayed him; but as it was, he had so carefully guarded his letters, and had been so jealous of any word that might put a stop to the correspondence which was one of the great brightnesses of his life. Thus Frieda was taken by surprise, scarcely so much by finding that David loved her, as that she loved him.

There was a long silence, and at last David spoke again :

"Do not answer me now; I can wait." Then she drew a little nearer to him, and put both her hands on his shoulders, as he sat in Lady Katherine's especial chair.

"You need not wait; I owe you so much. What have you not taught me by your words, and far, far more by your life? You need not wait; I am ready to come to you."

"You have counted the cost," he said. "You are sure you have no misgivings, Frieda, my Frieda."

"Misgivings! How can I be anything but proud and thankful?" she said, bowing her head upon his, and struggling in vain. to repress a flood of happy tears.

Then, after a few minutes' pause, he said: -"Let us go and tell my mother."

When Lady Katherine came home about eleven o'clock, she found Frieda alone in the drawing-room. She had just returned from St. Winifred's. Lady Katherine was not in the most serene frame of mind, for Maude was in high spirits. Mr. Collingwood had been invited to the party; he had taken her in to dinner, and she had made no secret of her intentions before those from whom her mother still hoped to hide what she persisted in calling "her child's infatuation." Poor Lady Katherine was reaping a bitter

harvest for her indulgence of Maude, and Frieda was struck with the sad and disappointed air of weariness with which she threw herself into her chair, her beautiful heliotrope satin dress falling in artistic. folds about her, diamonds flashing from her fingers and in her head-dress, and her face pinched, and worn and aged.

"Well, Frieda, so you have come at last; when did you arrive? I am sorry I had to dine out. I am sure I wish I had refused the invitation."

"How well you look, old Frieda," Maude said, throwing her arms round her cousin. "Really that plain style of dress is most becoming. But I forgot you are in mourning for the poor old provision merchant. We began to think you were going to live at Rome, and end by marrying an Italian prince."

So Maude rattled on. She looked very brilliant and pretty in her pale pink dress with a wreath of wild roses in her hair that golden hair which Arthur Collingwood had admired so much, as it floated on her back in the days of the proposed concert at St. Winifred's. It was curled and crimped now all over her head, and lay in waves, by the help of crimping pins, upon her white forehead.

"Well," Maude said, "I am tired, and must hear all your news in the morning. I will leave you and mother together: perhaps you may put her into a better mood. Mood, mumsie, mood, I did not say temper;" and with a kiss on her mother's cheek Maude fluttered away.

"Oh! Frieda, that child is breaking my heart. I had set my hopes on her, so pretty as she is and so much admired: and she persists in an absurd fancy for a young man who has scarcely a penny in the worldthat young Collingwood who was a friend of David Willoughby's when they were boys together. What with Maude's perverse folly, and Gerald's behaviour, he is out now at some smoking party, and will not be home till no one knows what hour,-I am quite weary of my life."

It was a sudden outbreak, and Frieda felt it to be a jarring note in her happiness. It did seem so pathetic to see a woman of Lady Katherine's age living only for the outside of things, and complaining thus bitterly of the children who were after all, very much what she had made them.

"I am sorry you are so unhappy, Aunt Katherine; but I hope Maude will not persist in what you disapprove: still—”

"Oh! well," said Lady Katherine, suddenly rallying-for she could not endure. pity from Frieda, though she had herself as it were courted it-" tell me about yourself. Your letter told me only of the old man's death a happy thing, I should think, and

Frieda stopped her aunt's remarks by saying,

"Uncle John was my best friend; he was generous to me in life, and he has been equally good to me in death."

"Has he left you a fortune?" Lady Katherine said eagerly.

"He has left me a share of his property at my aunt's death-a distant prospect, I hope and he has provided for my brother, and--" Frieda stopped; it was difficult to her to mention David to her aunt—“he has left David Willoughby what will enable him to go through Oxford, and set him quite at ease about the future.”

"I never heard such a thing! A perfect stranger like David Willoughby-what claim had he?"

"You seem to forget, Aunt Katherine, that he saved my brother's life, and that George was as dear, as a son could be, to both my uncle and aunt."

Poor Lady Katherine was too utterly amazed to attempt to conceal it. She asked many more questions, and Frieda answered them quietly and gently. At last Lady Katherine rose, and said she must not keep Thompson up any longer: became very much warmer in her manner to Frieda: and said that she hoped to see her own portrait in the Academy the next spring done by her; and, with a second good-night

kiss, she was leaving the room, when Frieda said,"Aunt Katherine, I have something else to tell you. I am engaged to David Willoughby."

Lady Katherine nearly dropped her little silver candlestick in the first shock of surprise.

"My dear Frieda! you really are not in earnest!"

"Indeed, I am very much in earnest, Aunt Katherine: and very earnestly happy and thankful to God for the love of so truehearted and good a Christian gentleman."

Lady Katherine's face underwent several changes as she stood transfixed with the news Frieda had communicated.

"Well," she said, "I hope you may not be disillusionée, my dear, for that is the common fate of us all."

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"Oh! no, no, Aunt Katherine: not when we grasp the substance and do not chase a shadow."

Lady Katherine went slowly to her room; the world had proved to her a hard master, and Thompson was moved to pity by the sight of her mistress, as she sank down in a chair, and, clasping her hands, said:

"Oh! Thompson; everything is against me; nothing turns out as I wish; and my children, my children, if they were only like the Willoughbys, how happy I should be!"

And this is the cry of thousands when life is slipping from them; they have sown tares, and yet they look for wheat; the brambles tear them as they seek on them for grapes; the waters of the earthly spring are bitter, and yet they have wilfully sought them instead of the pure stream of the Fountain. Alas, for such! for the evening shadows are gathering, and strength fails, and it is hard to begin to turn towards the One who can comfort and heal. Hard, but not impossible; nay, for He is ever ready and waits to be gracious.

The Octave was well in tune on the Christmas which followed the spring of Mr. Hunter's death. It would have been diffi

cult to find a happier party than that which had gathered in a pretty house on Headington Hill, Oxford.

Colonel Willoughby had taken it, that David might be within reach of the lectures, and Fraser and Gilbert were at the Military College. Edgar had come home on leave, and there was not a single vacant place at the long table on Christmas Day.

The mother, whose sweet face was shining with happiness, had a heart full of thankfulness, and she felt as if she had reached one of those resting-places in life's journey which are like the bowers in the old Allegory provided by the Lord of the highway for the refreshment of the pilgrim.

"Mother," said little Cory, "there is something I want to know. What are we to call Frieda ?"

"Call her?" exclaimed Fraser; "sister, of course."

"It's not that I mean at all," said Cory; "you don't understand. I mean that mother always said we were her Octave, and father says I am the lower C, and Cara the upper C; and I want to know what is to be done with Frieda."

"That is rather a puzzle," Colonel Willoughby said, "and I am no authority on musical matters; but I am inclined to think, as Frieda generally sounds the same note as our D in the Octave, she may as well lose her identity in his."

"I agree to the proposition," said David, "especially as the D would never have had any tone, or what they describe as quality of sound, unless strengthened by what we call a unison."

"Well said, my son; and I think we are all agreed that our Octave never made better harmony than since the day when the double note struck out so true and tender. It is the old story, David, that union is strength."

The music of the Octave is silent now, and will reach our ears no more. We have heard it strike out the minor chords of sadness and pain, and at times a jarring

discord when the harmony was spoiled and for a season lost. It must ever be so in all earthly melody; we must wait for perfection here as in other things, till the Master has set the key-note for an eternal strain of heaven's best music. But this key-note in

earth and heaven is the same: and happy is the mother who can feel that she has set her own life's music to that great dominant power, which can alone call forth all that is best and most beautiful in life and death -the power of love.

HE spirit of benevolence and philanthropy is the spirit of Christmas. Now, as ever, but now, if possible, in a deeper sense "He prayeth best who loveth best." "The Christmas Gift" we all need is "the love of God"-a sense of God's love to us in the gift of His Son-"shed abroad in our hearts," prompting us to love HIM, and loving Him, to "love our brother also."

"Christmas," says one, "is a time when the man surrounded with comforts, touched with finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance; and whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such widespread misery circled round him, he has all things fitting, all things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the multitude of wretchedness; demands to know for what special excellence he is promoted above the thousand thousand starving creatures; in his very tenderness for misery, tests his privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him downward to the brute. And so questioned, this man gives in modesty of spirit-in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not cold, formal charities, but reverent sacrifices to his suffering brother."

No doubt the difficulty of giving wisely and well, even at Christmas time, is no slight one; but this simply presses upon us the exercise of another Christmas grace -the grace of thoughtfulness. Thoughtful charity seldom errs. It springs from and prompts sympathy with the sufferer to be gladdened or relieved. And thus, as "true

mercy," it "blesses both the giver and the receiver."

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It is not, in a word, so much the amount of money we expend in our Christmas bounty, but the amount of thoughtfulness which we devote to our ministry that will determine its real value to others and to ourselves. On this ground we again commend to our Readers "Robin's" plea for "ROBIN DINNERS." In London alone, last year, the generous contributions of the readers of The Fireside, Home Words, and Hand and Heart enabled the "gentle " Bird to invite 10,000 human "Robins" to a "Robin Dinner." Robin," whose nest is at 7, The Paragon, Blackheath, will be glad to receive similar contributions this year for his London guests: but there are "Robins" in most parishes, "hungry enough at Christmas-tide-" can't find anything to eat "and we are sure our young friends, especially, would find the combination of thought and effort necessary to secure a "Happy Evening" for human "Robins" in their immediate neighbourhood, would bring as much happiness to themselves as to their hungry guests.

"He thinketh upon me," is the most precious element in the Divine Love; and so, whether in the home circle itself, where all have a grand field for the cultivation of affection on Christmas-day, or outside that circle in our Father's wider, universal Home, where many sad ones need gladdening, let thoughtfulness be the index and the proof of our desire that each and all may this year have "A HAPPY CHRISTMAS."