The Christmas Banquet

It was a sense of chillness and unreality that made Gervase Hastings the most miserable of the ten miserable guests annually assembled at the Christmas Banquet. Year after year, in accordance with the founder's bequest, the flaring torches mingled their golden splendor with the purple of the dusky curtains in the somber, wreath-hung hall. Year after year the guests assembled, only each time to murm...