It was the presence of Margaret Sewall Fernald which had made it possible to attempt music at this service--the music which it seemed impossible to do without. Her voice was one of rare beauty, her leadership that of training. Her husband, Guy, possessed a reliable, if uncultivated, bass. Edson had sung a fair tenor in his college glee-club. By the use of all her arts of persuasion Nan had provided an alto singer, from the ranks of the choir which had once occupied this organ-loft--the daughter of Asa Fraser. Whether the quartette thus formed would have passed muster--as a quartette--with the choir-master of St. John's, may have been a question, but it is certain the music they produced was so far above that which the old church had ever heard before within its walls that had the singers been a detachment from the choir celestial those who heard them could hardly have listened with ears more charmed. As "Holy Night" came down to him, William Sewall bent his head. But Ebenezer Blake lifted his. His dim blue eyes looked up--up and up--quite through the old meeting-house roof--to the starry skies where it seemed to him angels sang again. He forgot the people assembled in front of him--he forgot the responsibilities upon his shoulders--those bent shoulders which had long ago laid down such responsibilities. He saw visions. It is the old men who see visions. The young men dream dreams. The young city rector read the Christmas Story--out of the worn copy of the Scriptures which had served this pulpit almost from the beginning. He read it in the rich and cultivated voice of his training, but quite simply. Then Margaret sang, to the slender accompaniment of the little organ, the same solo which a famous soprano had sung that morning at the service at St. John's--and her brother William, listening from the pulpit, thought she sang it better. There was the quality in Margaret's voice which reaches hearts--a quality which somehow the famous soprano's notes had lacked. And every word could be heard, too--the quiet throughout the house was so absolute--except when Asa Fraser cleared his throat loudly in the midst of one of the singer's most beautiful notes. At the sound Mrs. George Tomlinson gave him a glance which ought to have annihilated him--but it did not. She could not know that the throat-clearing was a high tribute to the song--coming from Asa Fraser. "_How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given; So God imparts to human hearts The blessing of His heaven.... O Holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us to-day._"