"Don't let them come!"
"Nobody comes, Mary. It is all right, only you are not so good. After while somebody is coming. Then you are glad!"
"Keep them out! I don't want to go!"
"You don't go off; you stay right here with me and Conrad."
"They said—"
"Who?"
"The oxen."
Hannah's hand shook, but she still spoke reassuringly. "Were you in the barn, Mary?"
"Yes. You know how it is said that on Christmas eve, twelve o'clock, the animals talk. I thought so much about it, and I made up my mind to go and hear what they had to say. I was in the middle stable that's empty, and I waited, and all of a sudden—" She stopped, trembling.