He put his much-handled, oft-read books down before him on the table, and set himself to passing the evening with them.

Midnight is actually midnight when the sun goes down before five o'clock and there is no artificial interest for the after hours.
Most men have more religion at heart, latent or developed, than can be seen by others.

When they have not, when what shows is as much as what is--God pity them! Alec Trenholme was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the religion of him very visible.

Nevertheless, this evening his books, which had become not less but more to him because he had read them often, palled upon his taste.

When he was a boy his father had taught him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better.