evening in their Christmas games, Gabriel smiled grimly, and clutched the handle of his spade with a firmer grasp, as he thought of measles, scarlet-fever, thrush, whoopingcough, and a good many other sources of consolation beside.

In this happy frame of mind Gabriel strode along, returning a short, sullen growl to the good-humored greetings of such of his neighbors as now and then passed him, until he turned into the dark lane which led to the churchyard. Now he had been looking forward to reaching the dark lane, because it was, generally speaking, a nice, gloomy, mournful place, and he was not a little indignant to hear a young urchin roaring out some jolly song about a merry Christmas in this very sanctuary. So Gabriel waited till the boy came up, and then dodged him into a corner, and rapped him over the head with his lantern. five or six times, just to teach him to modulate his voice. And as the boy hurried away with his hand to his head, singing quite a different sort of tune, Gabriel Grub chuckled very heartily to himself, and entered the churchyard, locking the door behind him.

He took off his coat, set down his lantern, and getting into the unfinished grave, worked at it for an hour or so with right good-will. But the earth was hardened with the frost, and it was no very easy matter to break it up and shovel it out; and although there was a moon, it was a very young one, and shed little light upon the grave, which was in the shadow of the church. At any other time these obstacles would have made Gabriel Grub very moody and miserable; but he was so well pleased with having stopped the small boy's singing that he took little. heed of the scanty progress he had made, and looked down into the grave, when he had finished work for the night, with grim satisfaction, murmuring, as he gathered up his things,

"Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,

A few feet of cold earth when life is done."

"Ho! ho!" laughed Gabriel Grub, as he sat himself down on a flat tombstone, which was a favorite restingplace of his, and drew forth his wicker bottle; "a coffin at Christmas-a Christmas box. Ho! ho! ho!"

"Ho! ho! ho!" repeated a voice, which sounded close behind him.

Gabriel paused in some alarm, in the act of raising the wicker bottle to his lips, and looked round. The bottom of the oldest grave about him was not more still and quiet than the churchyard in the pale moonlight. The frost glistened on the tombstones, and sparkled like rows of gems among the stone carvings of the old church. Not the faintest rustle broke the profound tranquillity of the solemn scene. Sound itself appeared to be frozen up, all was so cold and still.

"It was the echoes," said Gabriel Grub, raising the bottle to his lips again.

"It was not," said a deep voice.

Gabriel started up, and stood rooted to the spot with astonishment and terror; for his eyes rested on a form which made his blood run cold.

Seated on an upright tombstone, close to him, was a strange, unearthly figure, whom Gabriel felt at once was. no being of this world. His long, fantastic legs, which might have reached the ground, were cocked up, and crossed after a quaint, fantastic fashion; his sinewy arms. were bare, and his hands rested on his knees. On his short, round body he wore a close covering, ornamented with small slashes, and a short cloak dangled on his back; the collar was cut into curious peaks, which served the goblin in lieu of ruff or neckerchief; and his shoes curled up at the toes into long points. On his head he

wore a broad-brimmed sugar-loaf hat, garnished with a single feather. The hat was covered with the white frost, and the goblin looked as if he had sat on the same tombstone very comfortably for two or three hundred years. He was sitting perfectly still; his tongue was put out, as if in derision; and he was grinning at Gabriel Grub with such a grin as only a goblin could call up.

"It was not the echoes," said the goblin.

Gabriel Grub was paralyzed and could make no reply. "What do you do here on Christmas eve?" said the goblin sternly.

"I came to dig a grave, sir," stammered Gabriel Grub. "What man wanders among graves and churchyards on such a night as this ?" said the goblin.

66 Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!" screamed a wild chorus of voices that seemed to fill the churchyard. Gabriel looked fearfully round; nothing was to be seen.

"What have you got in that bottle?" said the goblin. "Hollands, sir," replied the sexton, trembling more than ever; for he had bought it of the smugglers, and he thought that perhaps his questioner might be in the excise department of the goblins.

"Who drinks Hollands in a churchyard on such a night as this?" said the goblin.

"Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!" exclaimed the wild voices again.

The goblin leered maliciously at the terrified sexton, and then raising his voice exclaimed,

"And who, then, is our fair and lawful prize?"

To this inquiry the invisible chorus replied in a strain that sounded like the voices of many choristers singing to the mighty swell of the old church organ—a strain that seemed borne to the sexton's ears upon a gentle wind, and to die away as its soft breath passed onward; but the

burden of the reply was still the same, "Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!"

The goblin grinned a broader grin than before, as he said, "Well, Gabriel, what do you say to this?”

The sexton gasped for breath.

"It's-it's very curious, sir, very curious, and very pretty; but I think I'll go back and finish my work, sir, if you please.

"Work!" said the goblin; "what work?"

"The grave, sir; making the grave," stammered the sexton.

"Oh, the grave, eh ?" said the goblin. "Who makes graves at a time when all other men are merry, and takes a pleasure in it?"

Again the mysterious voices replied, "Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!"

"I'm afraid my friends want you, Gabriel; I'm afraid my friends want you."

"Under favor, sir, I don't think they can, sir; they don't know me, sir; I don't think the gentlemen have ever seen me, sir."

66

'Oh, yes, they have. We know the man with the sulky face and the grim scowl that came down the street tonight, throwing his evil looks at the children, and grasping his burying-spade the tighter. We know the man that struck the boy, in the envious malice of his heart, because the boy could be merry, and he could not. We know him.

We know him."

"I-I-am afraid I must leave you, sir."

"Leave us! Gabriel Grub going to leave us! Ho! ho! ho!"

As the goblin laughed, the sexton observed for one instant a brilliant illumination within the windows of the church, as if the whole building were lighted up; it dis

appeared, the organ pealed forth a lively air, and whole troops of goblins, the very counterpart of the first one, poured into the churchyard, and began playing at leapfrog with the tombstones, never stopping for an instant to take breath, but overing the highest among them, one after the other, with the most marvelous dexterity. The first goblin was a most astonishing leaper, and none of the others could come near him. Even in the extremity of his terror the sexton could not help observing that while his friends were content to leap over the common-sized gravestones, the first one took the family vaults, iron railings and all, with as much ease as if they had been so many street posts.

At last the game reached to a most exciting pitch; the organ played quicker and quicker, and the goblins leaped faster and faster, coiling themselves up, rolling head over heels upon the ground, and bounding over the tombstones like foot-balls. The sexton's brain whirled round with the rapidity of the motion he beheld, and his legs reeled beneath him as the spirits flew before his eyes, when the goblin king suddenly darted toward him, laid his hand upon his collar, and sank with him through the earth.

When Gabriel Grub had had time to fetch his breath, which the rapidity of his descent had, for the moment, taken away, he found himself in what appeared to be a large cavern, surrounded on all sides by crowds of goblins, ugly and grim. In the center of the room, on an elevated seat, was stationed his friend of the churchyard; and close beside him stood Gabriel Grub himself, without the power of motion.

66

Cold, to-night," said the king of the goblins; "very cold. A glass of something warm, here.”

At this command, half a dozen officious goblins, with a perpetual smile upon their faces, whom Gabriel Grub