“Do you see?” she cried, trying to force the window open.  “Oh, Jemmy, it might be! it might!”

Jem was used to his mother’s unaccountable whims of mood.  Ready, however, startled him.  The dog pricked up his ears, sniffed the air once or twice, then, after a grave pause of a minute, with a sharp howl, such as Jem had not heard him give for years, dashed through the kitchen into the wash-shed and out across the fields.  Martha Yarrow turned away from the window, and leaned her head against the dresser-shelves:  standing quite still, only that she clutched Jem’s hand.  The clock ticked noisily as a half-hour went by; the fire burned lower and dark.  The dog came back at last, dragging his feet heavily, came up close to her, and crouched down with a half human moan.  After a long time he got up, went out into the wash-kitchen in a spiritless way, and did not return again that night.  She did not move.  It seemed a long time to the child before she turned, her face wet with tears, and took him up in her arms, chafing his cold feet.

“It could not be!  I knew that, Jemmy.  I wasn’t a fool.  But I thought—­Oh, Pet, I’ve waited such a long while!”

He patted her cheeks, soothing her,—­the more effectually, perhaps, that he did not know what troubled her.

“Why, it’s Christmas, mother,” he said.

“I know that.  You see, I thought,” her eyes fastened on his in an appealing sort of way, “that, being Christmas, if there should be any lost body wandering out on the fields that God had forgotten—­What then?” all the blood gone from her face.  “Why, what then, Jem?  No home, no one to say to him, ’Here’s home, here’s wife and children a-waiting to love you,—­oh, sick with waiting to love you!’ No one to say that, Jem.  And him wandering out in the cold, going quick back to the mouth of hell, not knowing how God loved him.”

“If there is such a one,” Jem said, steadily, though his lip trembled, “God will let him know.”

“There is no such one,” sharply.  “There is no one yonder but knows his home, and is nearer to his God than you or I, James Yarrow.”

The boy made no reply,—­sat on her knees looking earnestly into the fire.  He had more nearly guessed her secret than she knew,—­near enough to know how to comfort her.  After a while, when she was quiet, he turned, and put his thin arms about her neck, smiling.

“Take me into your bed, mother, I’m so cold!  Let me into old Catty’s place this once.”

She nodded, pleased, and, putting him to bed, soon followed him.  When she held him snugly in her arms, the replenished fire making hot, flickering shadows from the next room, he whispered,—­

“Next Christmas, mother!  Only one year more!”

Again the quick shiver of her body; but this time her breath was gentle, a soft light in her eyes.

“Well, and then, my son?”

“Why, some one else then will call me son.  How long he has been gone, dear! so long that I never saw him since I was a bit of a baby.”