was whirling him out beyond all
the old landmarks. For now he was made to know that boyhood was gone,
and youth was going, and for one intoxicating moment he had looked over
the mountain top into the Promised Land of manhood.

XV

NOEL

The night was far spent and the Christmas dawn was graying in the
remotest east when Tom, sleeping in his clothes on a lounge before the
fire in the lower hall, roused himself and went noiselessly up stairs to
beg his father to go and lie down for a little while.

There was a trained nurse from South Tredegar in charge of the
sick-room; but from the beginning the three--husband, brother and
son--had kept watch at the bedside of the stricken one. There was little
to be done; nothing, in fact; and the nurse would have spared them the
nights. Yet no one of the three would surrender his privilege.

His father relieved, Tom mended the fire in the grate; and when he found
the nurse dozing in her chair, he woke her and persuaded her to go and
rest in the adjoining room, promising to call her instantly if she were
needed.

Left alone with his mother, he tiptoed to the bedside and stood for many
minutes looking with sorrow-blurred eyes at the still, rigid face on the
pillow. It was terribly like death; so like, that more than once he laid
his hand softly on the bed-covering to make sure that she still
breathed. When he could bear it no longer, he crossed the room to the
western window, drawing the draperies and standing between them to stare
miserably out into the calm, starlit void. While he looked, a meteor
burned its way across the inverted bowl of the heavens, and its passing
kindled the embers of the inextinguishable fire.

_And, lo, the star ... came and stood over where the young child was._
The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the
long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity,
dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it
seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the
Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; the heavenly
host singing the triumphant anthem of the ages, _Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth, peace_; the star of Bethlehem shining serenely
above a world lying in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Was it all true? or was it only a beautiful myth? If it were true, where
was the proof? Not in history, for this, the most wonderful and
mirac