“You have joined it,” he replied.
Just then the nurse brought her a glass.
“What is that?” she asked feebly.
“A little wine.” She held up a bottle in which a small quantity remained.
It seemed to the old preacher a sort of answer to his thought. “Have you bread here?” he asked the young woman. She went out and a moment later brought him a piece of bread.
He had often administered the early communion on Christmas morning, but never remembered a celebration that had seemed to him so real and satisfying. As he thought of the saints departed this life in the faith and fear of God, they appeared to throng about him as never before, and among them were the faces he had known and loved best on earth.
It was toward morning when he left; as he bade her good-by he knew he should see her no more this side of Heaven.
As he came out into the night the snow was falling, but the wind had died down and he no longer felt cold. The street was empty, but he no longer felt lonely. He seemed to have got nearer to God’s throne.
Suddenly, as he neared his house, a sound fell on his ears. He stopped short and listened. Could he have been mistaken? Could that have been a baby’s cry? There was no dwelling near but his own, and on that side only the old and unoccupied stable in the yard whence the sound had seemed to come. A glance at it showed that it was dark and he was moving on again to the house when the sound was repeated. This time there was no doubt of it. A baby’s wail came clear on the silence of the night from the unused stable. A thought that it might be some poor foundling flashed into his mind. The old man turned and, stumbling across the yard, went to the door.
“Who is here?” he asked of the dark. There was no answer, but the child wailed again and he entered the dark building, asking again, “Who is here?” as he groped his way forward. This time a voice almost inarticulate answered. Holding his dim little lantern above his head, he made his way inside, peering into the darkness, and presently, in a stall, on a lot of old litter, he descried a dark and shapeless mass from which the sound came. Moving forward, he bent down, with the lantern held low, and the dark mass gradually took shape as a woman’s form seated on the straw. A patch of white, from which a pair of eyes gazed up at him, became a face and, below, a small bundle clasped to her breast took on the lines of a babe.