"
"My children's voices!" he exclaimed. "I hear them
everywhere--they come to me in every wind--and I see them
as I wander in the night and storm--my children--torn
and dying in the trenches--beaten into the ground--I hear
them crying from the hospitals--each one to me, still as
I knew him once, a little child. Time, Time," he cried,
reaching out his arms in appeal, "give me back my children!"
"They do not die in vain," Time murmured gently.
But Christmas only moaned in answer:
"Give me back my children!"
Then he sank down upon his pile of books and toys, his
head buried in his arms.
"You see," said Time, "his heart is breaking, and will
you not help him if you can?"
"Only too gladly," I replied. "But what is there to do?"
"This," said Father Time, "listen."
He stood before me grave and solemn, a shadowy figure
but half seen though he was close beside me. The fire-light
had died down, and through the curtained windows there
came already the first dim brightening of dawn.
"The world that once you knew," said Father Time, "seems
broken and destroyed about you. You must not let them
know--the children. The cruelty and the horror and the
hate that racks the world to-day--keep it from them.
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