thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old Dewy.

"Perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our
doings?" the tranter whispered.

"'Od rabbit her!" said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner
of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is it. Your
plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a'
b'lieve, souls; so say I."

"Four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively.
"'Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,' number sixty-four."

At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice,
as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous
forty years--"A merry Christmas to ye!"



CHAPTER V: THE LISTENERS


When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly
died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of
the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the
exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside.
Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it,
revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture
by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance
to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her