They knelt; the merchant by his portmanteau as before.

  He watched the storm-door.  It did not open.  But he became conscious of
  light overhead.  He looked up.  A star was forming there.  Then a face of
  light on whose forehead gleamed the star.

  Then wings of pure light were outstretched above the family.

  “Amen,” said the collier.

  The light over him vanished.

  The collier’s family had lived down the demon, and changed him into
  an angel.

The Christmastide passed, but for days afterward the story of the forest family that lived down all the evil in them and turned it into an angel, haunted the mind of little Sky-High.

“I will tell that story, mistress,” he said one day, “at the Feasts in my Country of the Crystal Sea.”

“And to whom will you tell it, Sky-High?” asked Mrs. Van Buren.

“The Mandarin of the Crystal Sea is not deaf, mistress.  Sky-High will tell it to him.”

XV.

IN THE HOUSE-BOY’S CARE.

Lucy and Charles were full of joy when it was fully decided that they were to be taken on a voyage around the world.  They spent whole evenings with Sky-High, tracing the route on the maps and globes.  They would go by the way of San Francisco or Vancouver, and thence to Canton.  They were to visit Sky-High’s land first of all.

“They’re all gone mad sure!” said Nora; “and that boy’ll never send ’em back!”

Mr. Van Buren wished to learn something of the Chinese language as spoken, and was willing to study an hour every evening with the house-boy, and Lucy and Charles picked up the funny choking phrases as fast as their father.

Mr. Van Buren said that Manchuria, the land of the conquering Tartars, was likely to play a notable part in the history of the future in connection with the great Siberian railway; and the whole family began to take an interest in the history and condition of that vast province on the Ameer, where little Sky-High had lived.

Mrs. Van Buren read aloud to them all the story of Kubla Khan and of Tamerlane, and of Marco Polo, the great traveler, and about the Mongols, the Buddhist missionaries, the Great Wall, the long periods of peace and temple building.  They studied the maxims of Confucius and the accounts of modern missionaries.

For Charles and Lucy to hear these stories of the country that had given the world fire-crackers and silk, and was, moreover, the land of their dear little Sky-High, was like listening to the “Arabian Nights.”  The winter passed away quickly, delightful with their preparations for the great journey.

“You said that you had lived with the mandarin of Manchuria, I think,” remarked Mr. Van Buren to Sky-High one evening.

“With a mandarin in Manchuria, master,” corrected Sky-High.  “There are many mandarins in Manchuria.  Manchuria is a large country.”