Christmas-day this year fell on a Sunday. It was a model Christmas-day. My uncle and I walked to church in the morning. When we started, the grass was shining with frost, and the air was cold; a fog hung about the horizon, and the sun shone through it with red rayless countenance. But before we reached the church, which was some three miles from home, the fog was gone, and the frost had taken shelter with the shadows; the sun was dazzling without being clear, and the golden cock on the spire was glittering keen in the moveless air. ‘What do they put a cock on the spire for, uncle?’ I asked. ‘To end off with an ornament, perhaps,’ he answered. ‘I thought it had been to show how the wind blew.’ ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time great things--I mean the spire, not the cock--had been put to little uses.’ ‘But why should it be a cock,’ I asked, ‘more than any other bird?’ ‘Some people--those to whom the church is chiefly historical--would tell you it is the cock that rebuked St Peter. Whether it be so or not, I think a better reason for putting it there would be that the cock is the first creature to welcome the light, and tell people that it is coming. Hence it is a symbol of the clergyman.’ ‘But our clergyman doesn’t wake the people, uncle. I’ve seen him send _you_ to sleep sometimes.’ My uncle laughed. ‘I dare say there are some dull cocks too,’ he answered. ‘There’s one at the farm,’ I said, ‘which goes on crowing every now and then all night--in his sleep--Janet says. But it never wakes till all the rest are out in the yard.’ My uncle laughed again. We had reached the churchyard, and by the time we had visited grannie’s grave--that was the only one I thought of in the group of family mounds--the bells had ceased, and we entered. I at least did not sleep this morning; not however because of the anti-somnolence of the clergyman--but that, in a pew not far off from me, sat Clara. I could see her as often as I pleased to turn my head half-way round. Church is a very favourable place for falling in love. It is all very well for the older people to shake their heads and say you ought to be minding the service--that does not affect the fact stated--especially when the clergyman is of the half-awake order who take to the church as a gentleman-like profession. Having to sit so still, with the pretty face so near, with no obligation to pay it attention, but with perfect liberty to look at it, a boy in the habit of inventing stories could hardly help fancying himself in love with it. Whether she saw me or not, I cannot tell. Although she passed me close as we came out, she did not look my way, and I had not the hardihood to address her. As we were walking home, my uncle broke the silence. ‘You would like to be an honourable man, wouldn’t you, Willie?’ he said. ‘Yes, that I should, uncle.’ ‘Could you keep a secret now?’ ‘Yes, uncle.’ ‘But there are two ways of keeping a secret.’ ‘I don’t know more than one.’ ‘What’s that?’