“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; good will toward men!”
Open-eyed and awestruck, the little girl stands gazing upwards, a wonder fraught with strange beauty at her heart. Can it be possible that one of those bright-faced angels may be the mother whom Ruby never knew, sent from the far-off land to bear the Christmas message to the child who never missed a mother’s love because she never knew it?
“Oh, mamma,” cries poor Ruby, stretching appealing hands up to the shining throng, “take me with you! Take me with you back to heaven!”
She hardly knows why the words rise to her lips. Heaven has never been a very real place to this little girl, although her mother is there; the far-off city, with its pearly gates and golden streets, holds but a shadowy place in Ruby’s heart, and before to-night she has never greatly desired to enter therein.
The life of the present has claimed all her attention, and, amidst the joys and pleasures of to-day, the coming life has held but little place. But now, with heaven’s glories almost opened before her, with the “new song” of the blessed in her ears, with her own long-lost mother so near, Ruby would fain be gone.
Slowly the glory fades away, the angel faces grow dimmer and dimmer, the heavenly music dies into silence, and the world is calm and hushed as before. Still Ruby stands gazing upwards, longing for the angel visitants to come again. But no heavenly light illumines the sky, only the pale radiance of the moon, and no sound breaks upon the child’s listening ear save the monotonous music of the ever-flowing water.
With a disappointed little sigh, Ruby brings her gaze back to earth again. The white moonlight is flooding the country for miles around, and in its light the ringed trees in the cleared space about the station stand up gaunt and tall like watchful sentinels over this home in the lonely bush. Yet Ruby has no desire to retrace her steps homewards. It may be that the angel host with their wondrous song will come again. So the child lingers, throwing little pebbles in the brook, and watching the miniature circles widen and widen, brightened to limpid silver in the sheeny light.
A halting footstep makes her turn her head. There, a few paces away, a bent figure is coming wearifully along, weighted down beneath its bundle of faggots. Near Ruby it stumbles and falls, the faggots rolling from the wearied back down to the creek, where, caught by a boulder, they swing this way and that in the flowing water.
Involuntarily the child gives a step forward, then springs back with a sudden shiver. “It’s the wicked old one,” she whispers. “And I couldn’t help him! Oh, I couldn’t help him!”
“On earth peace, good will toward men!” Faint and far away is the echo, yet full of meaning to the child’s heart. She gives a backward glance over her shoulder at the fallen old man. He is groping with his hands this way and that, as though in darkness, and the blood is flowing from a cut in the ugly yellow wizened face.