But when the next Christmas came all was changed at the farm-house on the mountain. There had been no preparations made for keeping it as a holiday, and no gathering of kinsfolk was invited by Priscilla Parry. Nathan unbarred the kitchen-door, and lighted little Joan across the fold; but she went into the stable alone, and stood on the threshold singing the Christmas hymn with a sad, pale face that wore a lonely and frightened expression. The manger was empty, as it had been the year before; but the home seemed empty too. All Joan knew of the beginning of this mournful change was, that she awoke one pleasant sunny morning and found Rhoda gone. That day Aunt Priscilla roamed about the farmstead and the scattered fields her grandfather had enclosed upon the mountain, like one distracted, calling everywhere for Rhoda. The farm-labourers loitered about the fold and the little blacksmith's shop, whispering mysteriously whenever Joan had been within hearing. There had been nobody to keep them to their work, for Nathan was away all day, and did not return till the late sunset was past and even the loftiest peak of the highest mountain stood grey and dark against the sky. Nobody had bade Joan to go to bed, and she was afraid of her little, lonely, separate room, if Rhoda was not coming back to sleep with her. Not a single word had Aunt Priscilla spoken to her all the day, and if the young servant-girl had not given her some bread and a bowl of milk she would have been left without food, for Aunt Priscilla had not eaten a morsel, or sat down in the kitchen, since the early morning. Joan had curled herself up in a corner of the oak settle, which stood as a screen on one side of the corner fireplace, and had fallen fast asleep there, when she was aroused by Nathan's voice. He spoke so quietly and sadly that it did not quite awake her, and her drowsy ears took in the sound as if he had been talking to some one a long way off. But suddenly Aunt Priscilla spoke, in a voice so terrible and loud that she woke up in a fright. Her aunt was standing in the middle of the floor, and the light from a candle fell upon her face, weary and grey, and drawn into a frown of stern and passionate anger. "She shall never enter my doors again!" she exclaimed; "neither she nor her husband, Evan Price--the worst scamp in the country! I 'll never forgive her. Deceiving me all these months! Let nobody ever name her name to me again; she's dead to me for evermore." "No, no," said old Nathan, sorrowfully; "don't thee harden thy heart against her, Miss Priscilla. She 's been deceived as well as us, poor, young, ignorant lass! She does n't know what Evan is yet: a handsome young raskill, as all the girls make much of. If she repents--and she will repent, poor creature--thou must pardon her." "Never!" cried Aunt Priscilla, "not on my death-bed!" "'Forgive us our sins as we forgive them as sin against us,'" he answered, in a very mournful and solemn voice.