With head still bent, Dan had reached the gate to the road and pushed through it, and sent it back with a swing and a click, when the Deemster walked up to it, and half halted, and would have stopped. But Dan went moodily on, and the frown on the Deemster's wizened face was lost on him. He did not take the lane toward the old Ballamona, but followed the turnpike that led past Bishop's Court, and as he went by the large house behind the trees Ewan came through the smaller gate, and turned toward the new Ballamona. They did not speak, or even glance at each other's faces. Dan went on until he came to the parish church. There was singing within, and he stopped. He remembered that this was Christmas Eve. The choir was practising the psalms for the morrow's services. "Before I was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I kept Thy word." Dan went up to the church porch, and stood there and listened. "It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes." The wooden door, clamped and barred and worm-eaten and cut by knives, was ajar, and from where he stood Dan could see into the church. There were the empty pews, the gaunt, square, green-clad boxes on which he had sat on many a Christmas Eve at Oiel Verree. He could picture the old place as it used to be in those days of his boyhood, the sea of faces, some solemn and some bubbling over with mischief, the candles with their ribbons, the old clerk, Will-as-Thorn, standing up behind the communion rail with his pitch-pipe in his hand, and Hommy-beg in his linsey-woolsey petticoat, singing lustily from a paper held upside down. The singing stopped. Behind were the hills Slieu Dhoo and Slieu Volley, hidden now under a thick veil of mist, and from across the flat Curragh there came in the silence the low moan of the sea. "Once more," said a voice within the church, and then the psalm was sung again. Dan began to breathe easier, he scarce knew why, and a great weight seemed to be lifted off his breast. As he turned away from the porch a heavy web of cloud was sweeping on and sweeping on from over the sea. He looked up and saw that a snow-storm was coming, and that the snow-cloud would break when it reached the mountains. The clock in the gray tower was striking--one--two--three--so it was now three o'clock. Dan went down toward the creek known as the Lockjaw, under Orris Head. There he expected to see old Billy Quilleash and his mates, who had liberty to use the "Ben-my-Chree" during the winter months for fishing with the lines. When he got to the creek it was an hour after high water, and the lugger, with Quilleash and Teare, had gone out for cod. Davy Fayle, who, like Dan himself, was still wearing his militia belt and dagger, had been doing something among scraps of net and bits of old rope, which lay in a shed that the men had thrown together for the storing of their odds-and-ends.