“Queer job, life is!” said David, putting his card back in his pocket and wishing there were a little more time, or that he had a little more courage, so that he might confide in Dick Larrabee.  He felt a desire to tell him some of the wretchedness he had lived through.  It would be a comfort just to hint that his unhappiness had made him a coward, so that the very responsibilities that serve as a spur to some men had left him until now cold, unstirred, unvitalized.

“You’re right!” Dick answered.  “Life is a queer job and it doesn’t do to shirk it.  And just as queer as anything in life is the way that mother’s Christmas cards brought us back to Beulah!  They acted as a sort of magic, didn’t they?—­Jiminy!  I believe the next station is Beulah.  I hope the depot team will be hitched up.”

“Yes, here we are; seven o’clock and the train only thirty-five minutes late.  It always made a point of that on holidays!”

“Never mind!” And Dick’s tone was as gay as David’s was sober.  “The bean-pot will have gone back to the cellarway and the doughnuts to the crock, but the ‘folks back home’ ’ll get ’em out for us, and a mince pie, too, and a cut of sage cheese.”

“There won’t be any ‘folks back home,’ we’re so late, I’m thinking.  There’s always a Christmas Eve festival at the church, you know.  They never change—­in Beulah.”

“Then, by George, they can have me for Santa Claus!” said Dick as they stepped out on the platform.  “Why, it doesn’t seem cold at all; yet look at the ice on the river!  What skating, and what a moon!  My blood’s up, and if I find the parsonage closed, I’ll follow on to the church and make my peace with the members.  There’s a kind of spell on me!  For the first time in years I feel as though I could shake hands with Deacon Todd.”

“Well, Merry Christmas to you, Dick,—­I’m going to walk.  Good gracious!  Have you come to spend the winter?” For various bags and parcels were being flung out on the platform with that indifference and irresponsibility that bespeak the touch of the seasoned baggage-handler.

“You didn’t suppose I was coming back to Beulah empty-handed, on Christmas Eve, did you?  If I’m in time for the tree, I’m going to give those blue-nosed, frost-bitten little youngsters something to remember!  Jump in, Dave, and ride as far as the turn of the road.”

In a few minutes the tottering old sign-board that marked the way to Beulah Center hove in sight, and David jumped from the sleigh to take his homeward path.

“Merry Christmas again, Dick!” he waved.

“Same to you, Dave!  I’ll come myself to say it to Letty the first minute I see smoke coming from your chimney to-morrow morning.  Tell her you met me, will you, and that my visit is partly for her, only that father had to have his turn first.  She’ll know why.  Tell her mother’s card had Christmas magic in it, tell—­”

“Say, tell her the rest yourself, will you, Dick?” And Dave broke into a run down the hill road that led to Letty.