It was Christmas Eve, and the first snow of the season lay upon the fields of Oakfield, and the wintry wind blew cold and chill through the leafless trees in the yard and shook the windows of the old red farm-house, where Uncle Obed Harris lived, and where in his comfortable kitchen he sat waiting for the supper which his wife, whom everybody knew as Aunt Hannah, or Grandma Harris, was putting upon the table. Across the common and distant from the house a quarter of a mile or more, the stone church was seen with lights shining from every pane of glass, for the worshippers at St. Mark’s had that night, in addition to their usual Christmas-tree, an illumination in honor of Bethlehem’s child, born amid the Judean hills so many years ago. And ever and anon as Uncle Obed took his tea he heard the merry sound of sleigh-bells and the happy voices of the children as they went tripping by, excited and eager to know what the tree held for them on its many and beautiful branches of green. It was thirteen years since Uncle Obed had been inside his church on Christmas Eve, and during all these years he had nursed only bitter memories of the night when his daughter, Agatha, had made such glorious music in the organ loft, and then sang so sweetly the “Peace on earth, good will toward men,” with a soft look of ecstasy upon her face which the proud old father thought sprang wholly from a love divine, never dreaming of the terrible blow in store for him, when, after the services were over, he waited in vain for Agatha to join him on his homeward walk; Agatha did not come either then or ever after, and he heard next day of a marriage performed by a justice of the peace and knew from the note sent to him that Agatha was gone with the young man whom he had forbidden her ever again to speak to if she cared to be his daughter. “You must choose between Homer Hastings and me,” he had said, and she had chosen, and his door was henceforth barred against her, and she knew it, and accepted the situation, and wrote once or twice to her mother from New York, and said that she was happy, and told of a little girl baby, whom she called _Ruth_, and who had her grandmother’s soft brown eyes and hair. Then for a time they lost all trace of her until a letter came, telling them her husband was dead and asking if she might come home; Aunt Hannah pleaded with Uncle Obed then, begging him to go for their child and the little one, who would brighten their lonely lives, but he said: “No, she has made her bed and now she must lie in it. She was my _eyes_, and when they are once pulled out you can’t put them in again.”