“For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord....
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
Mona stops. The old man is breathing heavily. He has fallen asleep.
At eleven o’clock Mona is in her own room. What a magnificent night! The moon is shining full through the window, making its pattern on the carpet. Outside it is so bright that the entire camp is lit up by it, and there had been no need to switch on the big arc-lamps.
The camp lies white in the sparkling snow. For the first time for more than three years it is not distinguishable from the country round about. The white mantle of winter has made camp and country one.
It is quiet out there in the night. Not a breath of wind is stirring. A dog is barking in the Fifth Compound, which is half a mile away. There is no other sound except a kind of smothered hum from the inside of the booths, where twenty-five thousand men are waiting for the first hour of Christmas Day—only this and the rhythmical throb of the tide on the distant shore. The old man in the next room is still breathing heavily.
Mona, too, is waiting. She is sitting up on her bed, half-covered by the counterpane. At one moment she remembers Robbie’s watch and thinks of taking it out of the drawer and winding it up and putting it on, but something says “Not yet.” Although Peel church is nearly a mile away, she tells herself that on this silent night she will hear the striking of the clock.
She thinks of the battlefront in France. The truce of God is there too. No booming of cannon, no shrieking of shells, only the low murmur of a sea of men in the underground trenches and the bright moon over the white waste about them. Thank God! Thank God!
At a quarter to twelve she is up again and at the window. A dim, mysterious, divine majesty seems to have come down on all the troubled world. The moon is shining full on her face. She hears marching on the crinkling snow—the band of the guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Behind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet—her farm-hands are following.