n this our joyful day:
Let all men sing and say,
Holy, Holy!"

Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but
found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse.

"Four breaths, and then, 'O, what unbounded goodness!' number
fifty-nine," said William.

This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of
the performance.

"Good guide us, surely 'tisn't a' empty house, as befell us in the year
thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old Dewy.

"Perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our
doings?" the tranter whispered.

"'Od rabbit her!" said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner
of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is it. Your
plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a'
b'lieve, souls; so say I."

"Four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively.
"'Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,' number sixty-four."

At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice,
as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous
forty years--"A merry Christmas to ye!"

CHAPTER V: THE LISTENERS

When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly
died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of
the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the
exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside.
Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it,
revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture
by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance
to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her
face, her right hand being extended to the side of the window. She was
wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a
twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which
proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that
such a condition was discoverable. Her bright eyes were looking into the
grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between
courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of
dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant
resolution.

Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly--"Thank you, singers,
thank you!"

Together went the window quickly and quiet