From far off over the valley, with its dismantled cornfields and snow-covered haystacks, beyond the ice-bound river, floated slow, and sonorous, the mellow clanging of church bells.  They were ushering in the Christmas morn.  Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple, generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when the Jewish shepherds, guarding their flocks by night, read in their shining depths that in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ-Child was born.

The rising sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened with a creak, and Mr. Roney, still heavy-eyed with sleep, stumbled out upon the porch, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, blinked at the dazzling snow, and then shambled off toward the barn.  As he approached, the dog ran eagerly out, gambolled meekly around his feet and caressed his boots.  The man patted him kindly.

“Hello, old boy!  What were you yappin’ around so for last night, huh?  Grain-thieves?  You needn’t worry about them.  There ain’t nothin’ left for them to steal.  No, sir!  If they got into that granary they’d have to take a lantern along to find a pint of wheat.  I don’t suppose,” he added, reflectively, “that I could scrape up enough to feed the chickens this mornin’, but I guess I might’s well see.”

He passed over to the little building.  What he saw when he looked within seemed for a moment to produce no impression upon him whatever.  He stared at the hillock of grain in motionless silence.  Finally Mr. Roney gave utterance to a single word, “Geewhilikins!” and started for the house on a run.  Into the kitchen, where his wife was just starting the fire, the excited man burst like a whirlwind.

“Come out here, Mary!” he cried.  “Come out here, quick!”

The worthy woman, unaccustomed to such demonstrations, looked at him in amazement.

“For goodness sake, what’s come over you, Peter Roney?” she exclaimed.  “Are you daft?  Don’t make such a noise!  You’ll wake the young ones, and I don’t want them waked till need be, with no Christmas for ’em, poor little things!”

“Never mind the young ’uns,” he replied.  “Come on!”

As they passed out he noticed the slip of paper under the door and picked it up, but without comment.

He charged down upon the granary, his wife, with a shawl over her head, close behind.

She peered in, apprehensively at first, then with eyes of widening wonder.

“Why, Peter!” she said, turning to him.  “Why, Peter!  What does—­I thought—­”

“You thought!” he broke in.  “Me, too.  But it ain’t so.  It means that we’ve got some of the best neighbours that ever was, a thinkin’ of our young ’uns this way!  Read that!” and he thrust the paper into her hand.