t!" For a moment, she seemed to consider; and then
her shrill treble quavered out on the frosty air, my own deeper voice
taking up the second line--

"The first' Nowell' the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
--In fields as they lay, a-tending their sheep,
On a cold winters night that was so deep--
Nowell! Nowell!
Christ is born in Israel!"

Our voices followed our shadows across the gate and far up the field,
where Laban's sheep lay dotted. What Laban thought of it I cannot
tell: but to me it seemed, for the moment, that the shepherd among
his ewes, the dancers within the house, the sea beneath us, and the
stars in their courses overhead moved all to one tune,--the carol of
two children on the hill-side.

[1] Cow-house.

THE PARADISE OF CHOICE.

It was not as in certain toy houses that foretell the weather by
means of a man-doll and a woman-doll--the man going in as the woman
comes out, and _vice versa_. In this case both man and woman stepped
out, the man half a minute behind; so that the woman was almost at
the street-corner while he hesitated just outside the door, blinking
up at the sky, and then dropping his gaze along the pavement.

The sky was flattened by a fog that shut down on the roofs and
chimneys like a tent-cloth, white and opaque. Now and then a
yellowish wave rolled across it from eastward, and the cloth would be
shaken. When this happened, the street was always filled with gloom,
and the receding figure of the woman lost in it for a while.

The man thrust a hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out a penny,
and after considering for a couple of seconds, spun it carelessly.
It fell in his palm, tail up; and he regarded it as a sailor might a
compass. The trident in Britannia's hand pointed westward, down the
street.

"West it is," he decided with a shrug, implying that all the four
quarters were equally to his mind. He was pocketing the coin, when
footsteps approached, and he lifted his head. It was the woman
returning. She halted close to him with an undecided manner, and the
pair eyed each other.

We may know them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world
that contained neither friends nor kin. Both had very white hands
and very short hair. The man was tall and meagre, with a receding
forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but
was not. He had a tr