To little Joan everything was delightful. There had been the hay harvest, and the corn harvest, and the cutting of fern on the mountains for winter fodder, and the threshing of the corn on the barn-floor, and the piling up of great heaps of straw in the wide bays on each side of the barn. And now Christmas was coming. Joan had never kept Christmas, and knew nothing about it. But at Aunt Priscilla's farm it was a great day, as it always had been since she could remember. Every relative who could come to the farm was invited weeks beforehand; and nothing else was talked of but Christmas Day. The Sunday evening before it came old Nathan's sermon was all about the shepherds in the field, and how they found the little babe lying in the manger; and he told the story so well that Joan did not go to sleep at all, but sat listening to him with her dark eyes wide open. "Is it our manger, Rhoda?" she asked, when they went upstairs to their own little room to bed. "Will the babe be lying in our manger to-morrow morning?" "Perhaps," answered Rhoda; "nobody knows whose manger He will come to." "Oh! I wish it could be ours!" cried Joan eagerly. "I wish Mary and Joseph 'ud bring the little baby here, and the shepherds 'ud come to seek for Him. Would n't you love it, Rhoda?" "Shall we two get up early, very early in the morning, like the shepherds did, and go and look in our manger if He 's there?" asked Rhoda. "Oh, yes, yes!" answered Joan, almost wild with delight. "Oh! Rhoda, only suppose the baby should be there!" Long before old Nathan was stirring, or anyone else in the house was awake, Rhoda and Joan crept quietly down their own little staircase, and after lighting the candle in Nathan's great horn lantern, they let down the bar of the house-door and stepped out into the fold. It was very dark, but the dim light from the lantern sparkled upon a fine hoar-frost, which lay like silver on the causeway and glittered on every straw scattered about the yard. Not a sound was to be heard, except a very soft, low moan from the sea, and that they listened for as they stood still on the doorstep. Joan's heart was beating fast, and her small fingers clasped Rhoda's hand tightly as they stole along the causeway to the cow-shed just beyond the barn.