The long winter evenings were very dreary when the sun set early and the rain and the fogs overspread the mountains, and enshrouded the home with blackness.
Aunt Priscilla used to retire upstairs, where Joan could hear her sobbing often in the darkness; and the two young servants, the maid and the ploughboy, as soon as she was safely out of the way, would slink off out of the kitchen, where their mistress could overhear them.
It was not worth while to light a candle for a little girl like Joan, and many a long hour she sat alone in the dark chimney-corner with no light save the dull red glimmer of the embers in the grate, and hearing strange, mysterious noises all about her, sounds so low and quiet that they could only be heard when everything else was perfectly still. And going to bed was always a terror to her. The little creature could not put her terror into words; but all day long it was as if some powerful and pitiless enemy was lying in wait to seize her; and as the hour came when all the household went to bed, and she was forced to creep up her separate staircase to her lonely room, the terror reached its utmost height, and she often sprang into bed dressed, and drew the coverings up above her head, lest she should see or hear something more horrible than what she could image to herself.
What Joan would have done without Nathan no one can tell. During the long winter nights, whenever he was sitting with her by the fireside, he taught her to read, or read aloud to her out of his Bible, which was yellow and worn with much turning over of its leaves. He could sing a little still, though now his teeth were gone his voice was weak and quavering; but he made Joan sing with him, and took care to choose such hymns as his mistress had been taught when she was a child, knowing well she could not help hearing them through the unceiled rafters overhead. The newer hymns which Rhoda had often sung with her young, sweet voice, old Nathan never sung; and Aunt Priscilla, in her dark, desolate room, would sit still and listen, and think of the days when she was herself a child, and go to sleep and dream that she was a child again.
The third Christmas Eve came; the second since Rhoda ran away from her tranquil home and all who loved her truly. Joan had grown into a very silent, pale, and sad child, seldom laughing, and with no companion save old Nathan and a doll he had bought for her in the market-town, where he went every week instead of Miss Priscilla. She and Nathan could not sing, "Hark! the herald angels!" because that was one of Rhoda's favourite hymns; but as they sat together on the settle very quiet, for both of them were full of sorrowful thoughts, Joan laid her small fingers timidly on the old man's hard and horny hand.
"Nathan," she said very softly, lest Aunt Priscilla overhead should hear her, "can I go to-morrow, like Rhoda and me said we would, and look into the manger for the child Jesus? I know He can't be there, because I'm a big girl now. But me and Rhoda said we'd go every Christmas morning very early; and she 'll be thinking of it to-morrow. I'm sure Rhoda 'ill remember, and think I'm going to look for Him."
"Ay, ay, Joan," answered the old man; "I'd never say nay to anything as is done out o' love. Maybe Rhoda 'ill be thinking of it, and please God it 'ill do her good. I'll be up early i' th' morning and light the lantern, and see thee safe across the fold and hearken to thee singing the 'Heral' angels.'"
There was neither frost nor snow this Christmas. The weather had been as soft and mild as autumn, and there were still some pale monthly roses blooming against the southern walls of the farm-house. Old Nathan lighted Joan across the causeway and put the lantern into her hand when they reached the door of the outer cow-shed. As she stood alone on the low threshold of the farther shed, and looked up to the black space above her, where the bay of the barn opened into it on her left hand, she felt a little terrified. The light from her dim lantern could not reach the roof, but she could see the piled-up straw rising high above her, and the utter blackness beyond it.
Her own white, melancholy-looking face was lit up by the rays from the perforated top of the lantern, which swung from her hand as she lingered on the door-sill gazing forward into the dark shed. The thought of old Nathan not far away gave her some courage, and, after a timorous pause of a minute or two, her young, clear, yet tremulous voice began to sing the Christmas Hymn:—