ing. It trembled as it rested there, but the
tremor passed, and Annabel, turning once at the porch, gave her a last
look. Then she departed with her companions.

That afternoon, Jack and Flora had shaken down to wedlock as married
folk should, and sat together before the board spread with the dolls'
tea-things. The pallid light in the great hall-kitchen faded; the candles
were lighted; and then the children, first borrowing the stockings of
their elders to hang at the bed's foot, were packed off early--for it was
the custom to bring them down again at midnight for the carols. Aunt
Rachel had their good-night kisses, not as she had them every night, but
with the special ceremony of the mistletoe.

Other folk, grown folk, sat with Aunt Rachel that evening; but the old
walnut chair did not move upon its rockers. There was merry talk, but
Aunt Rachel took no part in it. The board was spread with ale and cheese
and spiced loaf for the carol-singers; and the time drew near for their
coming.

When at midnight, faintly on the air from the church below, there came
the chiming of Christmas morning, all bestirred themselves.

"They'll be here in a few minutes," they said; "somebody go and bring the
children down;" and within a very little while subdued noises were heard
outside, and the lifting of the latch of the yard gate. The children were
in their nightgowns, hardly fully awake; a low voice outside was heard
giving orders; and then there arose on the night the carol.

"Hush!" they said to the wondering children; "listen!..."

It was the Cherry Tree Carol that rose outside, of how sweet Mary, the
Queen of Galilee, besought Joseph to pluck the cherries for her Babe, and
Joseph refused; and the voices of the singers, that had begun
hesitatingly, grew strong and loud and free.

"... and Joseph wouldn't pluck the cherries," somebody was whispering to
the tiny Angela....

"_Mary said to Cherry Tree,
'Bow down to my knee,
That I may pluck cherries
For my Babe and me._'"

the carollers sang; and "Now listen, darling," the one who held Angela
murmured....

"_The uppermost spray then
Bowed down to her knee;
'Thus you may see, Joseph,
These cherries are for me.'

"'O, eat your cherries, Mary,
Give them your Babe now;
O, eat your cherries, Mary,
That grew upon the bough._'"

The little Angela, within the arms that held her, murmured, "It's the
gipsies, isn't it, mother?"

"No, darling. The gipsies have go