Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE CHRISTMAS CHILD BY HESBA STRETTON AUTHOR OF "JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER" ILLUSTRATED BY K. STREET NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. Published, September, 1909 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. [Illustration: NATHAN LIGHTED HER STEPS] [Illustration: Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE COMING OF JOAN 1 II. JOAN'S SEARCH 10 III. THE CHILD IN THE MANGER 28 IV. LOST AND FOUND 40 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Nathan lighted her steps _Frontispiece_ The two were never apart 8 Joan saw her aunt standing by her bedside 54 Nathan came upstairs to visit Rhoda 60 THE CHRISTMAS CHILD CHAPTER I THE COMING OF JOAN Along some parts of the coast in South Wales the mountains rise abruptly from the shore, with only a narrow shingle between them and the sea. High above the coast, however, there are warm, sunny little valleys and dells among the hills, where sheep can find pasture and a fold; and here there are many small farmsteads, surrounded by wild rocks and bleak uplands, where the farmer and his family live with their servants, if they happen to have any, as they used to do in old times, sitting in the same kitchen, and taking their meals together as one household. Miss Priscilla Parry was the last of three leaseholders of one of these little farms. Her grandfather had enclosed the meadows and the corn-fields from the open mountain, on condition that he should have a lease for three lives from the owner of the land. His own and his son's had been two of the lives, and Priscilla's was the third. The farm was poor, for the land was hard to cultivate. In every field there were places where the rocks pierced through the scanty soil, and stood out, grey and sharp, amid the grass and the ripening corn. The salt-laden winds and the fogs from the sea swept over them. Miss Priscilla spent no money in draining or manuring them; for was not the lease to pass away when she died, and she was nearly sixty years of age already?