with a shock that her preoccupation had been so great that she had forgotten about her winter flowers.
The fortnight before Christmas was interminable to her. Every morning she broke a hobbling path through the snow to the post-office, where she waited with a haggard face for the postmaster s verdict of "nothing." The rest of the day she wandered desolately about her house, from one window to another, always staring, staring up at Hemlock Mountain.
She disposed of the problem of the Christmas service with the absent competence of a person engrossed in greater matters. Miss Molly had declared it impossible—there was no money for a minister, there was no congregation, there was no fuel for the furnace. Miss Abigail wrote so urgently to the Theological Seminary of the next State that they promised one of their seniors for the service; and she loaded a hand sled with wood from her own woodshed and, harnessing herself and Miss Molly to it, drew it with painful difficulty through the empty village street. There was not enough of this fuel to fill even once the great furnace in the cellar, so she decreed that the service should be in the vestibule where a stove stood. The last few days before Christmas she spent in sending out desperate appeals to remote families to come. But when the morning arrived, she and Miss Molly were the only ones there.
The young theologian appeared a little before the appointed time, brought in the motor car of a wealthy friend of his own age. They were trying to make a record winter trip, and were impatient at the delay occasioned by the service. When they saw that two shabby old women constituted the congregation, they laughed as they
