For at that moment the old house-sentinel struck twelve--the Christmas-Night Twelve. The children had never heard such startling strokes--for the natural reason that never before had they been awake and alone at that hour. As those twelve loud clear chimes rang out, the two other guardians of the house drowsing by the clock, apprehensive after all regarding the children straying about in the darkness--these expressed their uneasiness by a few low gruff barks, and one followed with a long questioning howl--a real Christmas ululation! Then out in the henhouse a superannuated rooster drew his long-barrelled single-shooter out of its feather and leather case, cocked it and fired a volley point-blank at the rafters: the sound seemed made up of drowsiness, a sore throat, general gallantry, and a notice that he kept an eye on the sun even when he had no idea where it was--the early Christmas clarion! Further away in the barn a motherly cow, kept awake by the swayings and totterings of an infant calf apparently intoxicated on new milk, stood up on her hind feet and then on her fore feet and mooed--quite a Christmas moo! In a near-by stall an aged horse who now seemed to recognize what was expected of him on the occasion struggled to his fore feet and then to his hind feet, and squaring himself nickered--his best Christmas nicker! Under some straw in a shed a litter of pigs, disposed with heads and tails as is the packing of sardines--except that for the sardines the oil is poured on the general outside, but for the pigs it still remained on the individual inside--these pigs slept on--the proper Christmas indifference! For there had never been any holy art for them: nor miracles of their manger: they had merely been good enough to be eaten, never good enough to be painted! They slept on while they could!--mindful of the peril of ancestral boar's head and of the modern peril of brains for breakfast and sausage for supper. Then on the hearthstone of the library itself not far from where the children were huddled the American mouse which is always found there on Christmas Eve--this mouse, coming out and seeing the children, shrieked and scampered--a fine Christmas shriek! Whereat on the opposite side of the hearth a cricket stopped chirping and dodged over the edge of the brick--a clever Christmas dodge! All these leaving what a stillness!