And Mary's child at midnight
Was born to be our King.

Then be ye glad, good people,
This night of all the year,
And light ye up your candles,
For His star it shineth clear.

Before the song was over, Hannah had come on deck again, and was
listening eagerly. "I thank thee, Mistress Standish," she said, the
tears filling her blue eyes. "'Tis long, indeed, since I have heard that
song."

"Would it be wrong for me to learn to sing those words, Mistress
Standish?" gently questioned the little girl.

"Nay, Remember, I trow not. The song shall be thy Christmas gift."

Then Mistress Standish taught the little girl one verse after another of
the sweet old carol, and it was not long before Remember could say it
all.

The next day was dull and cold, and on Monday, the twenty-fifth, the sky
was still overcast. There was no bright Yule log in the _Mayflower_, and
no holly trimmed the little cabin.

The Pilgrims were true to the faith they loved. They held no special
service. They made no gifts. Instead, they went again to the work of
cutting the trees, and no one murmured at his hard lot.

"We went on shore," one man wrote in his diary, "some to fell timber,
some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all that
day."

As for little Remember, she spent the day on board the _Mayflower_. She
heard no one speak of England or sigh for the English home across the
sea. But she did not forget Mistress Brewster's story; and more than
once that day, as she was playing by herself, she fancied that she was
in front of some English home, helping the English children sing their
Christmas songs.

And both Mistress Allerton and Mistress Standish, whom God was soon to
call away from their earthly home, felt happier and stronger as they
heard the little girl singing:

He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.

FOOTNOTE:

[R] From Stone and Fickett's "Every Day Life in the Colonies;"
copyrighted 1905, by D. C. Heath & Co. Used by permission.

XXVI

THE CRATCHITS' CHRISTMAS DINNER

(Adapted)

CHARLES DICKENS

SCROOGE and the Ghost of Christmas Present stood in the city streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a
rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow
from the pave