"Why, surely," she answered. "Which one do you think he would like best?"
Phil had shrunk behind her, and beneath the gaze of the other boys his eyes were those of a little hunted animal at bay. "Bethlehem," he said, huskily.
And when Harry had struck the tuning-fork, they began to sing together,—
"O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by."
The twenty-fourth had been a good day for business in Tim Shartow's place. He had had venison for free lunch; two mandolin and guitar players had been there all the evening; and there was more than two hundred dollars in the till. But now, in the quiet of the early morning, as he sat alone, the reaction had come. He remembered how Rob MacFlynn had had too much, and gone home maudlin to the wife who had toiled all day at the wash-tub. He thought of the fight Joe Frier and Tom Stacey had had. And—he did not drink much himself; he despised a drunkard—and these things disgusted him. There was little Phil, too,—"the saloon-keeper's boy,"—and that cut deep. Wouldn't it pay better, in the long run—and then the music floated softly in.
He did not hear the words at first, but he had a good ear,—it was the singing that had brought him, as a boy, into the beer-gardens,—and, stepping to the window, he listened, all unseen by those without. There the words reached him:—
"How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him"—
and until they sang the "Amen," Tim Shartow never stirred from the window.
* * * * *