you people."

"Listen! You can't help listening when a cat yowls on the back fence,"
retorted Guy. "Go it alone; Margaret, girl."

But the next instant nobody was jeering, for Margaret's voice had never
seemed sweeter than from the old choir-loft.

"_Over the hills of Bethlehem,
Lighted by a star,
Wise men came with offerings,
From the East afar...._"

[Illustration:
"Cut it out--cut out the steam calliope!"]

It took them all, working until late on Christmas Eve, to do all that
needed to be done. Once their interest was aroused, nothing short of
the best possible would content them. But when, at last, Nan and Sam,
lingering behind the others, promising to see that the fires were safe,
stood together at the back of the church for a final survey, they felt
that their work had been well worth while. All the lights were out but
one on either side, and the dim interior, with its ropes and wreaths
of green, fragrant with the woodsy smell which veiled the musty one
inevitable in a place so long closed, seemed to have grown beautiful
with a touch other than that of human hands.

"Don't you believe, Sammy," questioned Nan, with her tired cheek against
her husband's broad shoulder, "the poor old 'meeting-house' is happier
to-night than it has been for a long, long while?"

"I think I should be," returned Sam Burnett, falling in with his wife's
mood, "if after a year and a half of cold starvation somebody had
suddenly warmed me and fed me and made me hold up my head again. It does
look pretty well--much better than I should have thought it could, when
I first saw it in its barrenness. --I wonder what the North Estabrook
people are thinking about this--that's what I wonder. Do you suppose
the Tomlinsons and the Pollocks and the rest of them have talked about
anything else to-day?"

"Not much else." Nan smiled contentedly. Then suddenly: "O Sam--the
presents aren't all tied up! We must hurry back. This is the first
Christmas Eve I can remember when the rattling of tissue paper wasn't
the chief sound on the air."

"If this thing goes off all right," mused Burnett, as he examined the
stoves once more, before putting out the lights, "it'll be the biggest
Christmas present North Estabrook ever had. Peace and good will--Jove,
but they need it! And so do we all--so do we all."

III

"There go pretty near every one of the Fernalds, down to the station.
Land, but there's a lot of 'em, counting th