do something to make her happy? She is so lovely, and she is so little, and she is so dear!”      

       They had entered the house, now a blaze of light. Kate’s father was standing on the hearth rug, his back to a great fireplace filled with roaring logs.     

       “Where have you two gadabouts been?” he laughed merrily. “What do you mean by staying out this late? Don’t you know it’s Christmas Eve?”      

       “We’ve been to see Cousin Annie, daddy; and it would make your heart ache to look at her! She’s there all alone. Can’t you go down and bring her up here?”      

       “Yes, I could, but she wouldn’t come, not on Christmas Eve. Did she have her candle burning?”      

       “Yes, just one poor little miserable candle that hardly gave any light at all.”      

       “And it was in the corner on a little table?”      

       “Yes, all by itself.”      

       “Poor dear, she always lights it. She’s lighted it for almost twenty years.”      

       “Is it for somebody she loved who died?”      

       “No—it’s for somebody she loved who is alive, but who never came back and won’t.”      

       He studied them both for a moment, as if in doubt, then he added in a determined voice, motioning them to a seat beside him:     

       “It is about time you two children heard the story straight, for it concerns you both, so I’ll tell you. Your Uncle Harry, Mark, is the man who never came back and won’t. He was just your age at the time. He and Annie were to be married in a few months, then everything went to smash. And it was your mother, Kate, who was the innocent cause of his exile. Harry, who was the best friend I had in the world, tried to put in a good word for me—this was before I and your mother were engaged—and Annie, coming in and finding them, got it all crooked. Instead of waiting until Harry could explain, she flared up, and off he went. Her hair turned white in a week when she found out how she had misjudged him, but it was too late then—Harry wouldn’t 

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