ture. As though moved by a common impulse,
the two soldiers sprang to attention, saluted, and, when the hymn
ceased, fell on their knees in prayer. Then the mist closed on them
again, the city among the clouds was hidden from view, and the sky lost
its translucence. But sleep was no longer possible for the soldiers.
They were as men who had seen the invisible; it was as though heaven had
descended upon them and the glory of the new-born King had gleamed in
their eyes, and they were filled with a holy awe.

Next morning the mist had cleared, and the miracle was explained. The
spot which they had chosen for their resting-place was at the foot of
the great scarp of limestone upon which stands the city of Bethlehem,
two thousand five hundred feet above the sea. The city had passed,
without the shedding of a drop of blood, into the hands of General
Allenby, and the soldiers stationed there, inspired by the associations
of the place and the Christmas season, had left their barracks shortly
before midnight, and, proceeding to the officers' quarters, had greeted
them with a hymn. And the Christmas moon, rising high above the
mountains of Gilead and Moab, had found for a short space of time an
opening in the curtain of mist and had poured down its light upon the
hills of Judea, making the city of Bethlehem seem to the rapt minds of
the two Yorkshire dalesmen as though it had been the city of the living
God let down from heaven.

Tales of a grandmother

I. The Tree of Knowledge

I spent a certain portion of every year in a village of Upper
Wharfedale, where I made many friends among the farm folk. Among these I
give pride of place to Martha Hessletine.

Martha Hessletine was always known in the village as Grannie. She was
everybody's Grannie. Crippled with rheumatism, she had kept to her bed
for years, and there she held levees, with all the dignity of bearing
that one might expect from a French princess in the days of the _grand
monarque_. The village children would pay her a visit on their way home
from afternoon school, and of an evening her kitchen hearth, near to
which her bed was always placed by day, was the Parliament House for all
the neighbouring farms. What Grannie did not know of the life of the
village and the dale was certainly not worth knowing.

Grannie's one luxury was a good fire. A fire, she used to say, gave you
three things in one--warmth, and light, and company. Usually she burnt
coal, but w