"_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 the children. I suppose they're going to meet Guy's wife's brother, that they've got up here to lead these Christmas doings to-night. Queer idea, it strikes me." Miss Jane Pollock, ensconsed behind the thick "lace curtains" of her "best parlour," addressed her sister, who lay on the couch in the sitting-room behind, an invalid who could seldom get out, but to whom Miss Jane was accustomed faithfully to report every particle of current news.