drawbridge the road was not well broken. She went, stumbling in the ruts
and hardly conscious of them. And Mary thought--

"Something in me is glad.

"It's as if something in me knew how to be glad more than I ever knew
how alone.

"For I'm nothing but me, here in Old Trail Town, and yet it's as if
Something had come, secret, on purpose to make me know why to be glad.

"It's something in the world bigger than I know about.

"It's in me, and I guess it was in folks before me, and it will be in
folks always.

"It isn't just for Ebenezer Rule and the City.

"It's for everybody, here in Old Trail Town as much as anywhere.

"It's for folks that's hungry for it, and it's for folks that ain't.

"It's always been in the world and it always will be in the world, and
some day we'll know what to do."

But this was hardly in her feeling, or even in her thought; it lay
within her thanksgiving that the child was coming; and he only a little
way down there across the marsh.

... It seemed quite credible and even fitting that the mighty, rushing,
lighted Express, which seldom stopped at Old Trail Town, should that
night come thundering across the marsh, and slow down at the drawbridge
for her sake and the little boy's. Several coaches' length from where
she stood she saw a lantern shine where they were lifting him down. She
ran ankle deep through the thinly crusted snow.

"_That's_ it!" said the conductor. "All the way from Idaho!" and swung
his lantern from the step. "Merry Christmas!" he called back.

The little thing clasping Mary's hand suddenly leaped up and down beside
her.

"Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" he shouted with all
his might.

Mary Chavah stood silent, and as the train drew away held out her hand,
still in silence, for the boy to take.

As the noise of the train lessened, he looked up.

"Are you her?" he asked soberly.

"Yes," she cried joyously, "I'm her!"

* * * * *

Their way led east between high banks of snow. At the end of the road
was the village, looking like something lying on the great white plate
of the meadows and being offered to one who needed it. At the far end of
the road which was Old Trail Road, hung the blue arc light of the Town
Hall, center to the constellation of the home lights and the shop lights
and the street lights. There, in her house, were her neighbours,
gathered to do no violence to that Christmas paper of their