"Don't you mean to have any service this Christmas?" asked Miss Molly one day.

Miss Abigail shouted at her so fiercely that she retreated in a panic. "Why not? Why shouldn't we? What makes you think such a thing?"

"Why, I didn't know of anybody to go but just you and me, and I noticed that you hadn't any flowers started for decorations the way you always do."

Miss Abigail flamed and fulminated as though her timid little friend had offered her an insult. "I've been to service in that church every Christmas since I was born and I shall till I die. And as for my not growing any flowers, that's my business, ain't it!" Her voice cracked under the outraged emphasis she put on it.

Her companion fled away without a word, and Miss Abigail sank into a chair trembling. It came over her with a shock that her preoccupation had been so great that she had forgotten about her winter flowers.

The fortnight before Christmas was interminable to her. Every morning she broke a hobbling path through the snow to the post-office, where she waited with a haggard face for the postmaster's verdict of "nothing." The rest of the day she wandered desolately about her house, from one window to another, always staring, staring up at Hemlock Mountain.

She disposed of the problem of the Christmas service with the absent competence of a person engrossed in greater matters. Miss Molly had declared it impossible—there was no money for a minister, there was no congregation, there was no fuel for the furnace. Miss Abigail wrote so urgently to the Theological Seminary of the next State that they promised one of their seniors for the service; and she loaded a hand sled with wood from her own woodshed and, harnessing herself and Miss Molly to it, drew it with painful difficulty through the empty village street. There was not enough of this fuel to fill even once the great furnace in the cellar, so she decreed that the service should be in the vestibule where a stove stood. The last few days before Christmas she spent in sending out desperate appeals to remote families to come. But when the morning arrived, she and Miss Molly were the only ones there.

The young theologian appeared a little before the appointed time, brought in the motor car of a wealthy friend of his own age. They were trying to make a record winter trip, and were impatient at the delay occasioned by the service. When they saw that two shabby old women constituted the congregation, they laughed as they stood warming their hands by the stove and waiting for the hour. They ignored the two women, chatting lightly of their own affairs. It seemed that they were on their way to a winter house party to which the young clergyman-to-be was invited on account of his fine voice—an operetta by amateurs being one of the gayeties to which they looked forward.

Miss Abigail and Miss Molly were silent in their rusty black, Miss Molly's soft eyes red with restrained tears, Miss Abigail's face like a flint.

"A pretty place, this village is," said the motorist to the minister. "I have visited the Ellerys here. Really charming in summer time—so utterly deserted and peaceful." He looked out of the window speculatively. "Rather odd we should be passing through it to-day. There's been a lot of talk about it in our family lately."

"How so?" asked the minister, beginning cautiously to unwind the wrapping from around his throat.

"Why, my brother-in-law—Peg's husband—don't you remember, the one who sang so fearfully flat in——" He was off on a reminiscence over which both men laughed loudly.

Finally, "But what did you start to tell me about him?" asked the minister.

"I forget, I'm sure. What was it? Oh, yes; he owns those print mills in Johnsonville—hideous place for Peg to live, that town!—and of late he's been awfully put out by the failure of his water-power. There's not much fall there at the best, and when the river's low—and it's low most all the time nowadays—he doesn't get power enough, so he says, to run a churn! He's been wondering what he could do about it, when doesn't he get a tip from some old Rube up here that, above this village, there's a whopping water-power—the Winthrop Branch. I know it—fished it lots of times. He didn't take any stock in it of course at first, but, just on the chance, he sent his engineer up here to look it over, and, by Jove, it's true. It'll furnish twice the power he's had in Johnsonville lately."

"Seems queer," said the minister a little skeptically, "that nobody's ever thought of it before."

"Well, I said that, but Pete says that his engineer tells him that there are lots of such unknown water-powers in the East. Nobody but farmers live near 'em, you see."

The minister was but mildly interested. "I thought the cost of transmitting power was so great it didn't pay for any water-force but Niagara."

"He isn't going to carry the power to Johnsonville. He's going to bring his mill here. A lot of his operators come from around here and most of 'em have kept their old homes, so there won't be any trouble about keeping his help. Besides, it seems the old hayseed who wrote him about it owned the land, and offered him land, water-power, right of way—anything!—free, just to 'help the town' by getting the mill up here. That bespeaks the materialistic Yankee, doesn't it?—to want to spoil a quiet little Paradise like this village with a lot of greasy mill-hands."

The minister looked at his watch. "I think I'll begin the service now. There's no use waiting for a congregation to turn up." He felt in one pocket after the other with increasing irritation. "Pshaw! I've left my eyeglasses out in the car." The two disappeared, leaving the vestibule echoing and empty.

For a moment the two women did not speak. Then Miss Molly cast herself upon her old friend's bosom. "They're coming back!" she cried. "Annie and her children!"

Miss Abigail stared over her head. "They are all coming back," she said, "and—we are ready for them. The library's ready—the school is ready—" she got up and opened the door into the great, cold, lofty church, "and—" They looked in silence at the empty pews.

"Next Christmas!" said Miss Molly. "Next Christmas—"

The young minister bustled in, announcing as he came, "We will open the service by singing hymn number forty-nine."

He sat down before the little old organ and struck a resonant chord.

"Oh, come, all ye faithful!"

his full rich voice proclaimed, and then he stopped short, startled by a great cry from Miss Abigail. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the tears were streaming down her face. He smiled to himself at the sentimentality of old women and turned again to the organ, relieved that his performance of a favorite hymn was not to be marred by cracked trebles. He sang with much taste and expression.

"Oh, come, all ye faithful!"

he chanted lustily,

"Joyful and triumphant!"

THE END