The little City was there too, but not between them now, though Newton had taken off its brown paper cover in honour of the great event which was about to take place.

In order to be doubly sure of the result, and dreading even the possibility of a little disappointment, Overholt had decided that he would subject the only chemical substance which the machine consumed to a final form of refinement by heat, melting, boiling and cooling it, all of which would require an hour or more before it was quite ready.  He felt like a man who is going to risk his life over a precipice, trusting to a single rope for safety; that one rope must not be even a little chafed; if possible each strand must be perfect in itself, and all the strands must be laid up without a fault.  Of the rest, of the machine itself, Overholt felt absolutely sure; yet although a slight impurity in the chemical could certainly not hinder the whole from working, it might interfere with the precision of the revolutions, or even cause the engine to stop after a few hours instead of going on indefinitely, as long as the supply of the substance produced the alternate disturbance of equilibrium which was the main principle on which the machine depended.

That sweetly prophetic evening silence, before the great feast of Good Will, does not come over everything each year, even in a lonely cottage in an abandoned farm in Connecticut, than which you cannot possibly imagine anything more silent or more remote from the noise of the world.  Sometimes it rains in torrents just on that night, sometimes it blows a raging gale that twists the leafless birches and elms and hickory trees like dry grass and bends the dark firs and spruces as if they were feathers, and you can hardly be heard unless you shout, for the howling and screaming and whistling of the blast.

But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country-side and in the woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait for the happy day, and tries to sleep but cannot, from sheer happiness and peace.  Indoors the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night, because it is not bitter weather, but only clear and cold and still, as it should be; or if there is only a poor stove, like Overholt’s, the wide door is open, and a comfortable and cheery red light shines out from within upon the battered iron plate and the wooden floor beyond; and the older people sit round it, not saying much, but thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads; but small boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all the afternoon, and are rather glad that the supper was not very good, because there will be the more room for good things to-morrow; and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may have had before supper-time, because