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.