On the evening of the twentieth of December, in the midst of a furious storm, a knock was heard at the parsonage, and lo, at the hastily opened door stood Squire Radbourne, powdered with snowflakes, and beaming like a veritable Santa Claus.
“I couldn’t feel easy,” he announced, after he had been relieved of coat and furs, and seated before the blazing fire, “to have next Sunday go by without a new bell on the meeting-house. We must have some good hearty chimes on that morning, sure; it’s the twenty-fifth, you know. So here’s a little Christmas present to the parish—or the Lord, either way you want to put it.”
The crisp fifty dollar note he laid down before the delighted couple was all that was needed.
Harold made a quick calculation—he had already selected a bell at a foundry a hundred miles away—and sitting down at his desk, wrote rapidly.
“I’ll mail your letter,” said the squire. “It’s right on my way—or near enough. Let’s get it off to-night, to save time.”
And away he trudged again, through the deepening drifts and the blur of the white storm.
On Saturday evening, after all the village people were supposed to be abed and asleep, two dark figures might have been seen moving to and fro in the old meeting-house, with a lantern. After some irregular movements in the entry, the light appeared in the belfry, and a little later, one queer, flat, brassy note, uncommonly like the voice of the cracked bell, rang out on the night air. Then there was absolute silence; and before long the meeting-house was locked up and left to itself again on Christmas Eve—alone, with the wonder-secret of a new song in its faithful heart, waiting to break forth in praise of God at dawn of day.
How the people started that fair Christmas morning, as the sweet, silvery notes fell on their ears! They hastened to the church; they pointed to the belfry where the bell swung to and fro in a joyous call of “Come! come! come! come!”
They listened in rapt silence, and some could not restrain their sobs, while others with grateful tears in their eyes looked upon the old, rusty, cracked bell that rested, silent, on the church floor; and as they looked, and even passed their hands lovingly over its worn sides, they thanked God for its faithful service and the good work it had wrought—and for the glad hopes that filled that blessed Christmas Day.