"It will be only a little while now," he said, gently. He thought he had never seen so much trouble and fear and anxiety in so young a face, and he moved towards her and said, in a whisper, as though those inside could hear him, "Control yourself if you can," and then added, doubtfully, and still in a whisper, "You can take my arm if you need it." The girl shook her head dumbly, but took a step nearer him, as if for protection, and turned her eyes fearfully towards the gate. The minutes passed on slowly but with intense significance, and they stood so still that they could hear the wind playing through the wires of the electric light back of them, and the clicking of the icicles as they dropped from the edge of the prison wall to the stones at their feet. And then slowly and laboriously, and like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted three there came suddenly from all the city about them a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks and tooting of whistles and the booming of cannon. From far down town the big bell of the State-house, with its prestige and historic dignity back of it, tried to give the time, but the other bells raced past it, and beat out on the cold crisp air joyously and uproariously from Kensington to the Schuylkill; and from far across the Neck, over the marshes and frozen ponds, came the dull roar of the guns at the navy-yard, and from the Delaware the hoarse tootings of the ferry-boats, and the sharp shrieks of the tugs, until the heavens seemed to rock and swing with the great welcome. Gallegher looked up quickly with a queer, awed smile. "It's Christmas," he said, and then he nodded doubtfully towards Bronson and said, "Merry Christmas, sir." It had come to the waiting holiday crowd down-town around the State-house, to the captain of the tug, fog-bound on the river, to the engineer sweeping across the white fields and sounding his welcome with his hand on the bell-cord, to the prisoners beyond the walls, and to the children all over the land, watching their stockings at the foot of their beds.