Lucky Pehr

Window shutters at back wide open, starlit sky is seen through windows. Background: Snow covered house-roofs; gable windows in the distance brilliantly illuminated. In room an old chair, a fire-pan and a picture of the Virgin, with a lighted candle before it. Room is divided by posts—two in centre thick enough to conceal an adult.
Chant, in unison, from the church below:
A Solis ortus cardine Et usque terrae limitem Christum canamus principem Natum Maria Virgini.
A VOICE. Curse not Christmas!
OLD MAN. I believe there are spirits about to-night—Ugh! it's the cold increasing; then the beams always creak, like an old ship. Here's your Christmas supper. Now perhaps you'll quit gnawing the bell-rope and eating up the tallow, you accursed pest!
A VOICE. Curse not Christmas!
A VOICE. He robs Christmas! He robs Christmas!
A VOICE. Heaven!
OLD MAN. Pehr, Pehr! Where are you? My eyes! Light the candles—My son, my son!
VIRGIN'S IMAGE. My SON!
NISSE. I say, it smells like roast pig!
NISSE. If we could only hit upon some trick to play on the bad old man it would do my bowels good! Can you see if he has left anything about which he values?