This was in the afternoon, and was all forgotten now, when with her Sunday clothes she never would have worn in that jam but for the great occasion, Aunt Betsy elbowed her way up the middle aisle, her face wearing a very important and knowing look, especially when Uncle Ephraim’s tall figure bent for a moment under the hemlock boughs, and then disappeared in the little vestry room where he held a private consultation with the rector. That she knew something her neighbors didn’t was evident, but she kept it to herself, turning her head occasionally to look up at the organ where Katy was presiding. Others too, there were, who turned their heads as the soft music began to fill the church, and the heavy bass rolled up the aisles, making the floor tremble beneath their feet and sending a thrill through every vein. It was a skillful hand which swept the keys that night, for Katy played with her whole soul—not the voluntary there before her in printed form, nor any one thing she had ever heard, but taking parts of many things, and mingling them with strains of her own improvising she filled the house as it had never been filled before, playing a soft, sweet refrain when she thought of Helen, then bursting into louder, fuller tones, when she remembered Bethlehem’s Child and the song the angels sang, and then as she recalled her own sad life since she knelt at the altar a happy bride, the organ notes seemed much like human sobs, now rising to a stormy pitch of passion, wild and uncontrolled, and then dying out as dies the summer wind after a fearful storm. Awed and wonderstruck the organ boy looked at Katy as she played, almost forgetting his part of the performance in his amazement, and saying to himself when she had finished, “Guy, ain’t she a brick?” and whispering to her, “Didn’t we go that strong?” The people had wondered where Helen was, as, without the aid of music, Katy led the children in their carols, and this wonder increased when it was whispered round that “Miss Lennox had come, and was standing with a _man_ back by the register.” After this Aunt Betsy grew very calm, and could enjoy the distributing of the gifts, going up herself two or three times, and wondering why anybody should think of _her_, a good-for-nothing old woman. The skates and the smelling bottle both went safely to Sylvia and John, while Mrs. Deacon Bannister looked radiant when her name was called and she was made the recipient of a jar of butternut pickles, such as only Aunt Betsy Barlow could make. “_Miss Helen Lennox._ A soldier in uniform, from one of her Sunday-school scholars,”