The Emperor of Portugalia | Page 9

so that their wicked eyes were no longer visible, and drew in
their claws under spruce needles and snow. When the last measure of
the first stanza died away, no one could have told that there was
anything besides ordinary old spruce trees on the forest heights.
The torches that had lighted the Ashdales folk through the woods were
burned out when they came to the highroad; but here they went on,
guided by the lights from peasant huts. When one house was out of
sight, they glimpsed another in the distance, and every house along the
road had candles burning at all the windows, to guide the poor
wanderers on their way to church.
At last they came to a hillock, from which the church could be seen.
There stood the House of God, like acme gigantic lantern, light
streaming out through all Its windows. When the foot-farers saw this,
they held their breath. After all the little, low-windowed huts they had
passed along the way, the church looked marvellously big and
marvellously bright.
At sight of the sacred edifice Jan fell to thinking about some poor folk
in Palestine, who had wandered In the night from Bethlehem to
Jerusalem with a child, their only comfort and joy, who was to be

circumcised in the Temple of the Holy City. These parents had to grope
their way in the darkness of night, for there were many who sought the
life of their child.
The people from the Ashdales had left home at an surly hour, so as to
reach the church ahead of those who drove thither. But when they were
quite near the church grounds, sleighs, with foaming horses and
jingling bells, went flying past, forcing the poor foot-farers to fake to
the snow banks, at the edge of the road.
Jan now carried the child. He was continually dodging vehicles, for the
tramp along the road had become very difficult. But before them lay the
shining temple; if they could only get to it they would be sheltered, and
safe from harm.
Suddenly, from behind, there came a deafening noise of clanging bells
and clamping hoofs. A huge sledge, drawn by two horses, was coming.
On the front seat sat a young gentleman, in a fur coat and a high fur cap,
and his young wife. The gentleman was driving; behind him stood his
coachman, holding a burning torch so high that the draft blew the flame
backward, leaving in its wake a long trail of smoke and flying sparks.
Jan, with the child in his arms, stood at the edge of the snowbank. All
at once his foot sank deep in the snow, and he came near falling.
Quickly the gentleman in the sledge drew rein and shouted to the
peasant, whom he had forced from the road:
"Hand over the child and it shall ride to the church with us. It's risky
carrying a little baby when there are so many teams out."
"Much obliged to you," said Jan Anderson, "but I can get along all
right."
"We'll put the little girl between us, Jan," said the young wife.
"Thanks," he returned, "but you needn't trouble yourselves!"
"So you're afraid to trust us with the child?" laughed the man in the

sledge, and drove on.
The foot-farers trudged along under ever-increasing difficulties. Sledge
followed sledge. Every horse in the parish was in harness that
Christmas morning.
"You might have let him take the girl," said Katrina. "I'm afraid you'll
fall with her!"
"What, I let him have my child? What are you thinking of, woman!
Didn't you see who he was?"
"What harm would there have been in letting her ride with the
superintendent of the ironworks?"
Jan Anderson of Ruffluck stood stockstill. "Was that the superintendent
at Doveness?" he said, looking as though he had just come out of a
dream.
"Why of course! Who did you suppose it was?"
Yes, where had Jan's thoughts been? What child had he been carrying?
Where had he intended going? In what land had he wandered? He stood
stroking his forehead, and looked rather bewildered when he answered
Katrina.
"I thought it was Herod, King of Judea, and his wife, Herodias," he
said.
GLORY GOLDIE'S ILLNESS
When the little girl of Ruffluck was three years old she had an illness
which must have been the scarlet fever, for her little body was red all
over and burning hot to the touch. She would not eat, nor could she
sleep; she just lay tossing in delirium. Jan could not think of going
away from home so long as she was sick. He stayed in the hut day after
day, and it looked as though Eric of Falla's rye would go unthreshed
that year.

It was Katrina who nursed the little girl,