whispered:

"I just wisht, Joyce, I was God for a minute--and it would all be right
or I'd be----"

"Billy!"

"I'd be gol-swizzled," Billy tamely ended.

He could not master details. He only knew something had happened. Joyce
was going to leave Gaston and go to Jude, and he, Billy, must make the
way easy, and stand by her as a gentleman should. He patted her arm
reassuringly as he thought it out.

"It's 'most night," he said; "I'll hitch up old Tate's mare to the sled.
He won't know! It's going to be a big night down to the Black Cat. I'll
drive you over to Jude--and wait for yer, if yer say so. If yer don't,
then I'll cut back--and I don't care after that."

"Billy!"

"When will you be ready?"

Joyce glanced at the clock.

"It's after six now. I'll be ready when you get back, Billy!"

A moment later Billy had set forth in the black coldness.

It was eight o'clock that evening when the revellers at the Black Cat
heard a crunching of the snow as a sled rapidly passed the tavern.

Leon Tate was mixing drinks, with a practised and obliging hand, when
the unaccustomed sound struck his ear; he paused, but when the
unappreciative driver passed, he lost interest.

"Thought some one was coming?" Tom Smith suggested.

"No; going," Murphy, the engineer, slowly answered.

"Where to, do you suppose?" asked Smith. Any new topic of conversation
early in the evening was welcome.

"Like as not," Tate came forward with his brew, "like as not it's them
folks up to the bungerler. I heard Mr. Drew had a cutter an' horse over
from Hillcrest; and going out nights skylarking seems part of his
religion."

"Religion!" sniffed Smith; "they're a rum lot, all right!"

"I wish they was!" Tate put in gloomily, but grinned as the others
laughed.

"It's a durned shame to take an animile out nights for fun," Murphy
interrupted; "I'd hate to run even the injine 'less 'twas important.
Gosh! Tate, you must have let your hand slip when you mixed this."

"Christmas comes but once a year." Tate beamed radiantly. It was good to
see that his Black Cat still had charms to compete successfully with the
bungalow.

"That piece up to the minister's," Smith glowed inwardly and outwardly,
"is the nervy one, all right," he remarked.

"Which one?" asked Tate; "the fixture or the transient?"

"The steady. I was setting here musing late this afternoon, when in she
come over there," Tom indicated the woman's side of the screen; "and
first th