The old year, which had been so full of trouble and sorrow, was passing gently away in calm and unusual brightness.

The air was soft and balmy, and the sunshine lay upon the picturesque village of Abbot's Leigh, and threw out every yellow lichen on the red roofs of the houses, and every leafless branch of the trees in full brightness and defined outline.

The year was full of grace and beauty on this its last day; and Gilbert Arundel, walking up and down the sunny terrace path before his house, on the left of the road leading to the church, felt the pleasant sense of returning strength and health, which is always so sweet.

The garden was at the back of the house, and before him lay a goodly prospect. The lowlands, sloping down to the mouth of the Severn, were bathed in the sunshine, and beyond, in clear outline, was the great encircling range of blue mountains on the opposite coast of Wales. In the clear atmosphere of the winter morning, everything was distinctly seen. The wooded headland of Portishead shot out to the left, and was rounded at full tide by many ships, outward bound for the rolling waters of the Atlantic.

Snowy gulls dipped and whirled on airy flight near the shore, and small crafts, with all sails set, danced and curtseyed beneath them as they made for the harbour.

"It is a place to rest and get well in," Gilbert thought; and then he turned at the sound of footsteps.

His wife was coming through the maze of deep-set, box-bordered flower-beds to speak to him.

"Mother and Piers will be here early," she said, putting her hand through her husband's arm; "and Gratian, and Melville, and Ralph will be later."

"Where are you going to put them all? You forget your country seat is not as accommodating as our Great George Street house."

"Oh! I will make room," she said; "it is so restful and lovely here. I wish——"

"What do you wish?"

"That we lived here. I know it is impossible while you are in the office every day. I only meant it is so delightful to be in the country; winter or summer, it is the best place."

"Few winter days are like this," Gilbert said; "but, darling, one day I may be able to give you a country home."

"A dear old-fashioned one like this?" she said, "Oh! then we will call it 'The Haven!'"

"It is not built yet," Gilbert said; "we must remember all that the children will want, education—"

"And accomplishments," she added, laughing. "Lettice, Lota, and little baby Joy must not grow up 'little rustics.'"

Joyce laughed, just her old, sweet, silvery laugh.

"It answered my purpose to be a little rustic, after all, as I took your fancy in my lilac cotton gown and white apron."

He put his arm round her as they walked, and pressed her close.

"They might be lovers of yesterday," Susan Priday thought, as she watched them from the nursery windows, "instead of having been married seven years. Such love must make a poor man rich and a rich man happy, and may God bless them both. The mistress grows prettier every day."

No one ever sounded Susan Priday's depth of gratitude; she was not a demonstrative person, and the other servants, as might be expected, were a little jealous of her, and sometimes she had dark hints to bear "of the daughter of bad folks being lucky," and muttered words of self-congratulation that their fathers had not been rioters and died in "'ospital beds."

But all these shafts were powerless to disturb Susan's peace, and baby Joy heard many a soliloquy which reached no other ears than hers.

"Yes," she was saying, as she swayed Joy gently to and fro; "they look like lovers of yesterday. The master is aged since his illness, and stoops a bit, but the mistress is younger than ever."

The husband and wife had turned now, and faced the house. Joyce looked up, and waved her hand and smiled, that "little pure, white hand," Susan thought, "which poor father said had saved him from despair."

Then the two little girls, in scarlet cloaks and hoods, came with Falcon to announce that they were ready for a walk with mother, and Gilbert asked if he might be permitted to come also.

"Of course," Falcon said; "only we thought you might be tired. Mother told us never to plague you to take us for a walk."

"I am getting quite well, my boy, and it will not be so easy, I hope, to plague me now as it has been lately."

"I've put away the trumpet, father, where I can't possibly see it, for I was afraid if I saw it I should be forced to give a big 'too-te-too.' So mother said, put it away till father is quite well, and then you can blow it in the garden. She wanted to keep it for me, but that was like a baby; now I could get it any minute I wished, only I won't."

Gilbert was half amused, half touched, by this lesson of self-restraint that Joyce had taught her little son, by means of the discordant trumpet, and he patted his head fondly, saying:

"You'll always be right if you follow mother's advice, my boy."

"I know it," Falcon said; "Susan says mother can make every one better."

Joyce and her little daughters were on in front, walking up the village to the churchyard.

Presently they retraced their steps to the village, where an old tree, with a gnarled trunk, stands at the junction of four roads, and was a favourite post of observation to the children.

A smart post-chaise, seen from afar, coming swiftly onwards, contained Melville and Gratian. They had slept at an hotel in Clifton on the previous night, and came in the style which befitted them.

Joyce was a little alarmed at the large amount of boxes on the roof, and wondered if they could by any means be carried upstairs.

Gratian, handsome and gay as ever, gave all the orders and settled with the post-boy, while Melville looked on.

It was one of those cases when it is expedient, perhaps, that the wife should take the lead, from the incapacity of the husband to manage himself or his affairs, but it has never a pleasing effect on those who look on, and Gilbert thought how well it was there were no children to hear Gratian's ringing tones ordering Melville to 'wake up' and carry two small packages into the hall.

"Where is Ralph?" Joyce asked.

"He took some qualm about leaving Fair Acres. Mr. Watson is ill—dying, they say—so Ralph said he did not want to leave the place; there are still many bad characters about."

"I am sorry to miss Ralph, and mother will be disappointed, especially as Harry has joined his ship."

"What a nice room," Gratian said, as they went upstairs; "but I hope you have a hanging-closet."

"I am afraid only pegs," Joyce said; "but there is a tiny dressing-room."

"Is Mrs. Arundel coming to this family gathering?"

"No; mother is in Oxfordshire."

"Staying at Maythorne's; how like Aunt Annabella."

"She is not at Maythorne's you know, it is shut up, for the owners are gone abroad."

"But I hear another carriage. Yes! that is mother and Piers."

Joyce flew downstairs to greet her mother, and to give Piers a rapturous embrace.

Everything in the house was well arranged, and especial care had been bestowed on "mother's room."

Mrs. Falconer had no fine dresses, so she did not enquire for a hanging cupboard. She speedily found her way to the nursery, and baby Joy delighted her by holding out her arms to her grannie, with a bewitching smile.

"It's all beautifully neat, Joyce," she said, looking round her with a critical air. "Well, you don't regret now I taught you useful things, though you have no accomplishments like that poor, foolish Charlotte?"

They were a very happy party at an early dinner, and the good arrangement of everything, and the excellence of the bill of fare, brought many compliments to Joyce, especially from her mother.

"Except at Fair Acres," she said, "she had never tasted such light pastry, or such good plum-puddings and mincemeat. The turkey, too——"

"Ah!" Joyce said, "the turkey came with a hamper of good things from Fair Acres. Dear Ralph is continually despatching home produce."

The real master of Fair Acres did not seem at all discomforted at this proof of his ignorance of his own estate.

Melville had resigned himself to an easy-going life, and, being well kept in check by his wife as to unlimited wine and spirits, he managed to pass muster, and was looked upon by his neighbours as a "good-natured fellow, a little given to airs, and not worthy to tread in his father's shoes; but it might have been worse."

Poor praise this; and of how many besides Melville do we say, sometimes with an aching heart, "It might have been worse; but it might have been oh! so much better."

Wasted lives, neglected opportunities, withered hopes, how thick they lie strewn upon our paths as the autumn of life is sinking into the days of winter barrenness and dearth.

But there is a bright "beyond" for faithful hearts, where the things we know not now we shall know then, and this bewildering maze of doubts and fears shall be made plain in the light of God's love.

A certain wistful look in Piers' eyes made Joyce think he would like to talk to her alone.

So, when the evening shadows were closing over the waters of the Severn, and the blue mountains fading into obscurity, and the white-winged seagulls sought their nests, Joyce asked her brother to come out with her, for it was more like midsummer than Christmas.

Joyce put her arm on her brother's shoulder as of old, and they went together to the churchyard, where the old grey tower of the church stood out solemnly against the after-glow in the west, where a planet shimmered in the opal depths.

"The old year is dying with a smile upon its face," Piers said. "It is hard to believe we are in midwinter."

"Very hard," Joyce replied; "and it is a time when, though my present is so happy and so brimful of thanksgiving, the past comes back, and will not be forgotten."

"I am glad you don't forget the dear old days," Piers said.

"Forget! oh! no; the sadness of the past does not shadow my happy present, but it chastens it. I always think of dear father when I stand here, and poor merry, happy Bunny, swept into that surging sea."

"Yes," Piers said, sighing; "the strong are taken and the weakly ones left. Harry is, I suppose, half way round the world again in the 'Persis.' There is Ralph working hard and enduring a good deal at the old home, while I——"

"You are not unhappy, dear?" Joyce asked, anxiously.

"No," he said; but the "No" was not heartily said. "After all, we think too much of ourselves and all our little concerns. Why, Joyce, what are we and this earth we live in, when compared to that great universe of which these stars, as they come out one by one, seem to bring a nightly message? What are we, to think so much of ourselves? and what are life, and death, and troubles, and joys, and petty disappointments? They are nothing—lighter than dust in the balance."

"They are something to God," Joyce said, reverently. "He has told us so. Dearest Piers, you are not losing that Faith which we used to call our staff in the dear old days."

Piers was silent for a moment.

"Joyce," he said, at last, "I like to talk to you sometimes. I sit and read in my den, and go out and in of the sitting room and see how mother is getting on, and my brain gets full of cobwebs and I am impatient, and long to spring up into a better and nobler life, and yet I am tied down. Don't you think I did not feel my miserable weakness when I heard of Gilbert, in the thick of the rioters, saving a woman and child, and bravely doing his best in the face of the weakness and incompetence of those about him? I felt as if I would have given something to get a hard thump on my head in such a cause, the cause of humanity."

"Piers, you are dull at home, I know, but you have the delightful young doctor for a friend."

"Yes; but I can't sham illness to get him to come; he is a long way off. But I am doing some more diagrams for his lecture on Fungi."

"I am so glad; and Piers, when Gilbert can really afford it, we are going to have a house in the country, and call it 'The Haven,' and you and mother shall come and live with us, and you shall help me to teach Falcon, and we shall be so happy."

"Ah! that is looking a long way forward, Joyce. Perhaps my haven will be here, under the shadow of this old church, before then. But I feel the better already for being with you, old Joyce; you are just the same as you ever were."

The brother and sister exchanged a kiss, and then, in the silence of perfect sympathy and affection, walked back to the house.

The whole family assembled in the dining-room as the bells of the church rang out the old year. In the pause—that solemn pause before the clock strikes twelve, and the knell for the dying year is followed by a great rejoicing peal for that which is new born—Gilbert Arundel read, in slow, clear tones, that wonderful Psalm which ever seems to be so fraught with wisdom, and to express so well the yearning of the human soul for something, which as the generations roll by, and pass like a tale that is told, remains steadfast and immoveable.

Lord, thou hast been our Refuge; and, notwithstanding the storms and the troubles of this short and mutable life, faithful hearts like Joyce's can add, in trusting confidence, "and wilt be to the end."

An hour later, when the last chimes had rung out from every belfry tower from far and near, and the fair young year lay calm and beautiful beneath the stars, husband and wife went together to the long, low nursery, where the three elder children lay in profound slumber. The kiss and blessing did not disturb Lettice or Lota, but the "Happy new year, darling," brought Falcon to a state of half consciousness.

"Happy new year, mother—father," he murmured, with an added word which sounded like "my trumpet."

"That beloved trumpet," said Joyce, laughing. "I let him take it out into the garden after dinner, and give one great blow; but he was so loyal, he came and hid it again, out of sight, saying, 'If father heard that, it was only just once.'"

"Dear old boy!" Gilbert said. "I shall not forget his self-denial learned from his mother."

"Nay," she said, playfully, "I do not quite wish to blow trumpets."

"Not your own, certainly," was the quiet rejoinder.

They did not forget baby Joy. Her cradle was in their own room; and Joyce called her husband to look at her, and wish her the "happy new year," as he had wished the others.

"A happy new year to my little Joy," he said.

The baby moved a little, and, throwing one fat arm behind her head, a flickering smile played over her face, a light rather than a smile, such as comes over the faces of the little ones sometimes when in sleep, their angels draw near.

It was one of those supreme moments in life, which do not find expression in many words:—

"A happy new year to you, my little Joy," Joyce repeated, and then there was silence, while—

"Two faces o'er the cradle bent,
Two hands above the head were locked,
These pressed each other while they rocked,
Those watched a life that Love had sent.
O solemn hour!
O hidden power!"

THE END

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