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