His lantern was a spark on
the hill-side, and he could not tell the voice at that distance.
"Have you seen him?"
"Wha-a-a-t?"
"The angel of the Lo-o-ord!"
"Wha-a-a-t?"
"I'm afraid we can't make him understand," she whispered.
"Hush; don't shout!" For a moment, she seemed to consider; and then
her shrill treble quavered out on the frosty air, my own deeper voice
taking up the second line--
"The first' Nowell' the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
--In fields as they lay, a-tending their sheep,
On a cold winters night that was so deep--
Nowell! Nowell!
Christ is born in Israel!"
Our voices followed our shadows across the gate and far up the field,
where Laban's sheep lay dotted. What Laban thought of it I cannot
tell: but to me it seemed, for the moment, that the shepherd among
his ewes, the dancers within the house, the sea beneath us, and the
stars in their courses overhead moved all to one tune,--the carol of
two children on the hill-side.
[1] Cow-house.
THE PARADISE OF CHOICE.
It was not as in certain toy houses that foretell the weather by
means of a man-doll and a woman-doll--the man going in as the woman
comes out, and _vice versa_. In this case both man and woman stepped
out, the man half a minute behind; so that the woman was almost at
the street-corner while he hesitated just outside the door, blinking
up at the sky, and then dropping his gaze along the pavement.
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