e the old German hymn:

"Now the woods are all sleeping,
Guard us we pray."

"Let us pray now," said the collier.

They knelt; the merchant by his portmanteau as before.

He watched the storm-door. It did not open. But he became conscious of
light overhead. He looked up. A star was forming there. Then a face of
light on whose forehead gleamed the star.

Then wings of pure light were outstretched above the family.

"Amen," said the collier.

The light over him vanished.

The collier's family had lived down the demon, and changed him into
an angel.

The Christmastide passed, but for days afterward the story of the forest
family that lived down all the evil in them and turned it into an angel,
haunted the mind of little Sky-High.

"I will tell that story, mistress," he said one day, "at the Feasts in
my Country of the Crystal Sea."

"And to whom will you tell it, Sky-High?" asked Mrs. Van Buren.

"The Mandarin of the Crystal Sea is not deaf, mistress. Sky-High will
tell it to him."

XV.

IN THE HOUSE-BOY'S CARE.

Lucy and Charles were full of joy when it was fully decided that they
were to be taken on a voyage around the world. They spent whole evenings
with Sky-High, tracing the route on the maps and globes. They would go
by the way of San Francisco or Vancouver, and thence to Canton. They
were to visit Sky-High's land first of all.

"They're all gone mad sure!" said Nora; "and that boy'll never send 'em
back!"

Mr. Van Buren wished to learn something of the Chinese language as
spoken, and was willing to study an hour every evening with the
house-boy, and Lucy and Charles picked up the funny choking phrases as
fast as their father.

Mr. Van Buren said that Manchuria, the land of the conquering Tartars,
was likely to play a notable part in the history of the future in
connection with the great Siberian railway; and the whole family began
to take an interest in the history and condition of that vast province
on the Ameer, where little Sky-High had lived.

Mrs. Van Buren read aloud to them all the story of Kubla Khan and of
Tamerlane, and of Marco Polo, the great traveler, and about the Mongols,
the Buddhist missionaries, the Great Wall, the long periods of peace and
temple building. They studied the maxims of Confucius and the accounts
of modern missionaries.

For Charles and Lucy to hear these stories of the country that had given
the world fire-crackers a