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.