The waves lapped the shore in gentle rifts of spray; the beach itself shone in the rising light like fretted silver. Beyond the foamy earth-colored breakers lay the illimitable sea, a dark violet glow, fading into the dim horizon whence came the dawn. The man's eye was fixed on the far line which his sight could never pass; his wife's quick glance followed his. It was from that dread Beyond, she knew, that he had fancied last night the dead beckoned to him.
She touched him again.
"It is a quiet morning yonder," she said, calmly.
"Yes, Lotty."
"God sent your dream. I hardly hoped, Jerome," her eyes filling with tears, "that we should keep Christmas together,—you, the baby, and I."
He smiled and pressed her hand, touched the little cheek, and then looked wistfully out again.
He held the baby God had given to comfort his old age proudly and tenderly; but his heart would turn to the other child's face that was watching for him yonder behind the dawn, and listen for the weak little voice which he knew on that Christmas morning was somewhere calling,—"Father! father!"
LUCY'S LETTERS.
On a cold January night I returned home after a holiday visit to town. Snow was just beginning to fall, and a desolate sort of feeling came over me as the omnibus drove up to my residence. A bright, cheerful light shone out of the library-windows, and Ernestina, a maid who had lived with me half a score of years before her marriage, was at the gate to receive me.