They hurried a little faster then, prodding the indignant Polly to greater exertions—not because any of them was afraid of darkness on the familiar commons, but because this was Christmas Eve and there was much to do at home. Later, bands of carol-singers would go from house to house through the town, singing under their neighbors’ windows, and in each window lighted candles would blaze an answering greeting to them across the friendly dark of Christmas Eve. Lilla Joy pointed toward the northwest, where a low, heavy-looking cloud had risen over the horizon soon after sunset. “That’s a real snow cloud,” she insisted. “We’ll have a white Christmas, after all.” “I’m glad,” Erica sighed happily, leaning back in the hay and drawing her woolly red cape about her more tightly, for the wind was decidedly sharp now. Her cheeks burned red from the cold and the day’s exertions, and her eyes, which were the exact shade of the harbor water when the sky was cloudless, shone starrily. She loved Christmas—_loved_ it; every sweet old custom from choosing and bringing home the tree to trimming it with tinsel balls, gilt paper cornucopias, and bunches of gay red holly; and later still, the hanging up of the long, limp stockings over the mantel in the parlor. Last of all, there was the little ceremony of lighting the Christmas candles in all the front windows, upstairs and down. Snuggled down cozily in the warm hay, Erica shivered excitedly and began to sing, very softly at first, that most beautiful of all the sweet old Christmas songs: “Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright—” Her voice lifted a little, joyously, with the second line, and one by one the other children took it up and sang with her, the fresh, happy voices ringing out clearly in the dusk. And so, still singing, they walked and drove into town just as lights began to be lighted in the houses along Orange Street, and a few hardy stars came out overhead through the gathering snow clouds and twinkled down in benediction, as they must have twinkled over a far-away land across the seas, twenty centuries ago, on a group of young shepherds who also came, singing, to celebrate that first Christmas of all. “Father’s boat was to get in today,” Lilla Joy declared as they dropped Mart and herself at their door. “He promised he’d be home for Christmas. I wonder what he’s brought from Boston.” “Passengers, for one thing,” Mart laughed. “He was going to bring some cousins of the Gardeners’ over to spend the holidays—off-islanders, you know. I wish’t it was Lis who was coming,” he added, awkwardly. “Doesn’t seem just right to have Christmas without him, does it, Erica?” Erica put out her hand impulsively and clasped his strong, calloused palm with sudden gratitude. “Thank you, Mart,” she said, softly. “No, it—it seems sort of—all wrong.” [Illustration: STILL SINGING, THEY WALKED AND DROVE INTO TOWN]