A week before Christmas, Mavis and her husband returned to Melkbridge.  Christmas Day that year fell on a Sunday.  Upon the preceding Saturday, she bade her many Melkbridge acquaintances to the feast.  When this was over, she wished her guests good night and a happy Christmas.  After seeing her husband safely abed and asleep, she set about making preparations for a project that she had long had in her mind.  Going to her room, she put on the plainest and most inconspicuous hat she could find; she also donned a long cloak and concealed face and hair in a thick veil.  Unlocking a box, she got out a cross made of holly, which she concealed under her cloak.  Then, after listening to see if the house were quiet, she went downstairs in her stockings, and carrying the thick boots she purposed wearing.  Arrived at the front door, the bolts and bars of which she had secretly oiled, she opened this after putting on her boots, and let herself out into the night.  Vigorous clouds now and again obscured the stars:  the world seemed full of a great peace.  Mavis waited to satisfy herself that she had not awakened anyone in the house; she then struck out in the direction of Pennington.  It was only on the rarest occasions that Mavis could visit her boy’s grave, when she had to employ the greatest circumspection to avoid being seen.  Although since her translation from insignificance to affluence and local importance, she was remarkably well known in and about Melkbridge, and although her lightest acts were subjects of common gossip, she could not let Christmas go by without taking the risk that a visit to the churchyard at Pennington would entail.  Her greatest fear of detection was in going through the town, but she kept well under the shadows of the town hall side of the market-place, so that the policeman, who was there on duty, walking-stick in hand, would not see her.  Once in the comparative security of the Pennington road, she hurried past dark inanimate cottages and farmsteads, whilst overhead familiar constellations sprawled in a now clear sky.  Several times on her progress, she fancied that she heard footsteps striking the hard, firm road behind her, but, whenever she stopped to listen, she could not hear a sound.  Just as she reached the brewery at Pennington, clouds obscured the stars; she had some difficulty in picking her way in the darkness.  When she got to the churchyard gate, happily unlocked, it was still so dark that she had to light matches in order to avoid stumbling on the graves.  Even with the help of matches, it was as much as she could do to find her way to the plain white stone on which only the initials of her boy and the dates of his birth and death were recorded.  When she got to the grave, the wind had blown out so many of her matches that she had only four left.  One of these she lit in order to place the holly cross on the grave; she had just time to put it where she wanted it to lie, when the match went out.  She knelt on the ground, while her heart went out to what was lying so many feet beneath.