all save little Emily, who walked
clasping Mary's hand.

"Aren't you staying up late, Emily?" Mary asked her.

"Yes," assented the child, contentedly.

"Won't you be sleepy?" Mary pursued.

"I was going to stay awake anyhow," she said; "I ain't goin' sleep all
night. We said so. We're goin' stay 'wake and see Santa Claus go by."

"Go by?" Mary repeated.

"Yes," the child explained; "you don't think that'll hurt, do you?" she
asked anxiously. "And then," she pursued, "if we don't see him, we'll
know he's dead everywheres else, too. An' then we're goin' bury him
to-morrow morning, up to Gussie's house."

At the station, no one was yet about. The telegraph instrument was
clicking there, too, signaling the world; a light showed in the office
behind a row of sickly geraniums; the wind came down through the cut and
across the tracks and swept the little platform. But the children
begging to stay outside, Mary stood in a corner by the telegraph
operator's bay window and looked across to the open meadows beyond the
tracks and up at the great star. The meadows, sloping to an horizon
hill, were even and white, as if an end of sky had been pulled down and
spread upon them. Utter peace was there, not the primeval peace that is
negation, but a silence that listened.

"'While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the
ground,...'" Mary thought and looked along the horizon hill. The time
needed an invocation from some one who watched, as many voices, through
many centuries, had made invocation on Christmas Eve. For a moment,
looking over the lonely white places where no one watched, as no
one--save only Jenny--watched in the town, Mary forgot the children....

The shoving and grating of baggage truck wheels recalled her. Just
beyond the bay window she saw little Emily lifted to the truck and the
four others follow, and the ten heels dangle in air.

"Now!" said Pep. And a chant arose:

"'Twas the night before Christmas when all
through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with
care
In the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would
be there...."

Upborne by one, now by another, now by all three voices, the verses went
on unto the end. And it was as if not only Tab and Pep and Bennet and
Gussie and little Emily were chanting, but all children who had ever
counted the days to Christmas and had found Christmas the