Guard us we pray."
"Let us pray now," said the collier.
They knelt; the merchant by his portmanteau as before.
He watched the storm-door. It did not open. But he became conscious of light overhead. He looked up. A star was forming there. Then a face of light on whose forehead gleamed the star.
Then wings of pure light were outstretched above the family.
"Amen," said the collier.
The light over him vanished.
The collier's family had lived down the demon, and changed him into an angel.
The Christmastide passed, but for days afterward the story of the forest family that lived down all the evil in them and turned it into an angel, haunted the mind of little Sky-High.