Part 2 (1/2)

”The King of Love my Shepherd is!”

With a common impulse the two girls waved their hands from the window as the car plunged forward.

”Good-night, little sisters!”

”Good-night, little brothers!”

[Sidenote: How He comes]

”Sleep well, little people. The Christ Child is with you. You asked Him, and He came----”

”And the wonderful thing,” said Peg, ”the most wonderful thing is, that He came _through us_!”

”But that,” answered Margaret thoughtfully, ”is just how He always _does_ come.”

[Sidenote: The story of a girl's adventure for a father's sake that may help girls who are at all like Anna.]

Anna

BY

KATHARINE S. MACQUOID

Three thousand feet up the side of a Swiss mountain a lateral valley strikes off in the direction of the heights that border the course of the Rhine on its way from Coire to Sargans. The closely-cropped, velvet-smooth turf, the abundant woods, sometimes of pine-trees and sometimes of beech and chestnut, give a smiling, park-like aspect to the broad green track, and suggest ideas of peace and plenty.

As the path gradually ascends on its way to Fadara the wealth of wild flowers increases, and adds to the beauty of the scene.

A few brown cow-stables are dotted about the flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The gra.s.shoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their incense in undisturbed solitude.

When one has crossed the brook and climbed an upward slope into the meadow beyond it, one enters a thick fir-wood full of fragrant shadow; at the end is a bank, green and high, crowned by a hedge, and all at once the quiet of the place has fled.

Such a variety of sounds come down the green bank! A c.o.c.k is crowing loudly, and there is the bleat of a young calf; pigs are squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may get dinner and a bed.

Before the c.o.c.k has done crowing--and really he goes on so long that it is a wonder he is not hoa.r.s.e--another voice mingles with the rest.

It is a woman's voice, and, although neither hoa.r.s.e nor shrill, it is no more musical than the crow of the other biped, who struts about on his widely-spread toes in the yard, to which Christina Fasch has come to feed the pigs. There are five of them, pink-nosed and yellow-coated, and they keep up a grunting and snarling chorus within their wooden enclosure, each struggling to oust a neighbour from his place near the trough while they all greedily await their food.

[Sidenote: ”Come, Anna!”]

”Come, Anna, come,” says the hard voice; ”what a slow coach you are! I would do a thing three times over while you are thinking about it!”

The farmyard was bordered by the tall hedge, and lay between it and the inn. The cow-house, on one side, was separated from the pigstyes by a big stack of yellow logs, and the farther corner of the inn was flanked by another stack of split wood, fronted by a pile of brushwood; above was a wooden balcony that ran also along the house-front, and was sheltered by the far-projecting eaves of the s.h.i.+ngled roof.

Only the upper part of the inn was built of logs, the rest was brick and plaster. The house looked neatly kept, the yard was less full of the stray wood and litter that is so usual in a Swiss farmyard, but there was a dull, severe air about the place. There was not a flower or a plant, either in the balcony or on the broad wooden shelves below the windows--not so much as a carnation or a marigold in the vegetable plot behind the house.

A shed stood in the corner of this plot, and at the sound of Christina's call a girl came out of the shed; she was young and tall and strong-looking, but she did not beautify the scene.