Malcolm Reynolds was a man whom life had passed over like a sandstorm, shaping him with the abrasions of fate and circumstance. There were places he was plain rubbed raw, and the slightest touch or reminder produced a response less decision than reflex. Other parts of him were worn smooth, blank and featureless, offering no clue to what was underneath and no purchase to hold or move him. And there were still other parts of him where the softer, more yielding layers had been scoured away, exposing the harder material beneath that no storm could further erode.

But there was more to him than simple endurance. Under the proper circumstances, his heart lightened, and he gladdened the hearts of those in his company. He could tell a joke, play a game, dance to a tune, and hold up his end of a conversation. There were even people scattered across the 'Verse who would say that Mal Reynolds was easy to get along with.

None of those people worked for him, however. And, to Mal's mind, that was as things should be; a boss whose people were too comfortable around him wasn't asking enough of them. But he valued his crew, as talents and as people, and tried to do right by them, and took them as they came. Including the one who dressed in loud floral shirts and had married his right-hand girl. Nevertheless, it was damned fortunate that the craziest person aboard who couldn't read minds was also a crackerjack pilot.

Mal was on the last two steps to the bridge doors when he heard a voice inside. "Oh, god, will this nightmare never end?" Wash groaned. "Traveling for five days with no food or water. I don't know how much longer we can go on."

Mal paused at the hatch. The pilot was seated at his console with his back to the door, an array of toys spread across the displays. He wiggled his stego in an imitation of a weary walk as he pushed it across the console. "If our expedition fails, saurian civilization is doomed. Already our comrades are faltering." With his other hand, he brought his Rex alongside. "Be strong, old friend," he said in a scratchy voice. "I always eat the weakest first. I'd miss you."

Mal said, "I always knew you played with em."

"Didn't realize it was my guilty secret," Wash said without turning. He left the toy monsters in place and reached overhead to flip a switch. "Or that you were trying to catch me at it. I'd have put on a better show."

"Why dinosaurs, anyway?"

"Well," the pilot said, scratching an ear, "the oldest of these are my little sister's." He touched the stegosaur and Rex. "When they're young, Core World girls are fengla about em, the way Rim girls are about horses. River comes up here to play with them sometimes, did you know that?"

Mal dropped into the copilot's seat and turned to face the pilot. "No."

"Just as well. Usually they're in pitched battles with Independent soldiers. The humans don't win often. The dinos are smarter. Anyway. She sent me to boot camp with her two favorites, and I managed to hang onto them all through the War. Saved my sanity, maybe."

Mal started to express his doubts about how much of Wash's sanity had been saved, but then the man's tone registered. "That right?"

Wash stared out the window at the stars for a moment, then said, "When we reach Viking, will we be landing the ship, or just sending a shuttle down? I want see how the old girl handles in atmo now."

Mal was fair certain that wasn't the first thing the pilot had thought to say, but he rode along. "No cargo on Viking, just a meet. But we should be pickin up at our next stop. What did you do to my ship?"

"Got a new airfoil profile for the inertial field. It's still a lenticular ovoid, but the angle of attack…" he stopped at the look on Mal's face. "Right. You know the ship's inertial field extends out past the hull a bit."

"Sure. That's why you got to kick the shuttles out a little before you light em up, else you're just wasting fuel."

"Right. In atmo, one way the field helps us in flight is that it sort of acts as an outer skin that keeps most of the air from hitting the hull. There are places you could stand on her while we're zooming along and hardly feel a breeze." He patted the console. "Love the old girl, but she's about as aerodynamic as a gravy boat. That's why most Fireflys land without an approach glide, just drop straight down, fighting gravity all the way."

"Spendin the captain's fuel in a most heartbreakin way."

"Dearer than blood, I know. But you can change the shape of the inertial field a little, if you've got a good mechanic. Ours is sort of lens-shaped, but the front and lateral cross-sections are asymmetrical… the bottom curve is shallower than the top one, and it sort of pokes out in front a little. So it creates lift in flight, saves fuel and makes her more agile. Kaylee and I have been experimenting with different shapes."

"Huh. Wash, Fireflys been around a long time. You say other ones don't do this, even though it cuts costs?"

The pilot shrugged. "It's a kind of knowledge gap between specialties. Kaylee would have figured it out in a minute if she knew how to fly, I bet. But regular engineering types don't pay much attention to what goes on up on the bridge. And most space pilots don't have a good grasp of flight principles, either. And damn few of them care about how the machinery works that makes the ship go, as long as it does what they expect when they flip a switch."

Mal nodded. Most of the pilots he knew had a right distaste for getting their hands dirty; it was another reason he'd wanted Wash so bad. After watching him stick his head into the works and talk about making changes, Mal had known Wash was the kind of pilot the creaky old ship needed. "Ayuh. Spose you're more mechanical from bein raised on a machine world like New Pitts."

"Not really. There are plenty of ignorant button-pushers there too. I just don't like having to take somebody else's word that something my life's depending on is running right."

"You do that every time you get on an elevator."

"I mean, something I'm at the controls of." He stared out at the stars again. "You've heard me say, 'any landing you can crawl away from is a good landing'?" The muscles at the hinge of his jaw flexed. "Well, one time, I had a very bad landing."

"On Taylor."

Wash turned briefly to him, then turned back to the stars. "Don't know why I should be surprised. I suppose anything I whisper in her ear goes straight to yours, if she thinks you might need to know."

"Actually, you told me. In a bar on Boros when the girls were out shoppin. The time Zoë came in and carried you out."

"Oh."

"Didn't say much. Just that it was the last time you'd ever trust a mechanic you were sleepin with."

"Ouch." The pilot shifted in his seat. "Her name was Janine. Looked just like Inara, if you can imagine Inara with dirty hands."

Mal scoffed. "Somewhat of a stretch."

"And dark blonde hair."

"Huh."

"And ten centimeters taller - incredible legs - and maybe six or eight kilos heavier. Lighter skin. Green eyes."

"In what particular way," Mal asked, "did she resemble Inara?"

"Oh. The way she looks at you."

"Wait. Inara looks at you like a girl you used to sleep with?"

"Well, no. She looks at you like a girl I used to sleep with. At me, I mean. Her." Wash flipped another switch and studied a screen.

Mal said heavily, "Just what were we talkin about?"

"Dinosaurs, I think."

"Maybe we should get back on that subject."

"I'm not sure we actually left it, but okay." Something beeped once on the pilot's console. "Grav anomaly. Just for a second."

"I didn't feel it."

"It was too faint for that. AG field looks fine, though. Funny. Anyway. I woke up still inside the wreckage. Moving a finger brought more pain than I ever thought existed. The Browncoats who found me dragged me out by my armpits like a sack of sand. It hurt too much to scream. I swear, till I looked down and saw my legs, I thought they'd left them in the wreck. I spent eighteen months in Independent hands, busted up worse than they could fix. Six or eight weeks in a hospital back home would have had me right back to normal, but…"

"But there wasn't any prisoner exchange. Not after the first six months or so. I remember the arguments. The Core had plenty a warm bodies to replace their losses, unlike us, and they were gettin tired of takin the same men prisoner every battle. Sides, every morsel we fed a prisoner came right out of the mouth of one of our soldiers. They were still fightin for the Alliance just sittin on their pigus. What prison were you at?"

"Allanville."

Mal's last bit of irony deserted him. "Wo de ma." Deaths at Allanville had topped thirty-five percent by the time it was 'liberated' in the third year of the War. The calculated cruelties of the 're-education programs' and 'social experiments' visited on Independents in Alliance captivity paled at the horrors the victors found when they landed at Allanville and marched through its gates. Its commandant had been tried for war crimes, quickly, and executed. "For what it's worth, the cheerin wasn't all on the Core side of the Border when Wirz stretched a rope."

"Anybody who cheered was an idiot. Wirz was probably the most decent guy in the camp. But he got no supplies, and the men who guarded his prisoners were the dregs, jibas who couldn't be trusted to point a rifle in the right direction out at the front. He did what he could for us. I testified for the defense at his 'trial', such as it was."

"Huh."

Wash stared at the toys on his console. "For example. I healed as well as I could without surgery – that is, not very. I got to the latrine and the mess on crutches, but that was about all the walking I was good for. One of the guards thought it was hilarious to kick my crutches out from under and listen to me scream. Did it about three times a week. He even let me see him coming, just for the added fun of watching me try to get away. He was the only one, but he wasn't the only one who thought it was funny. Wirz found out and put him on permanent watchtower duty – without a gun. Just sent him up there and had the ladder removed. He got his meals hauled up by rope and his slop bucket lowered the same way. After that, the other hundans were a little more polite. He was still up there when the Alliance landed. He testified against Wirz at the trial."

The console beeped again, and Wash frowned.

"Something wrong?"

"Another blip on the grav. But it's not a field glitch. It looks like it's coming from outside. But that doesn't make any sense. It'd take a moon-sized body in visible range, or maybe a big ship going close by on hard burn." He shrugged. "Must be the instruments. Maybe Kaylee'll have an idea." He picked up his Rex. "Mal, there were guys lots worse off than me in that camp. Men with serious wounds, or sicknesses that needed treatments they weren't getting. We were all dying, but some were dying by millimeters and others by centimeters. I'm not sure how it got started, but I found myself in the terminal-case barracks doing little puppet theaters with my dinos, comedy skits that brought a smile or two to men with nothing to be happy about. Then I started doing them for chronic cases like me. Word spread, and then regular prisoners were dropping in. A couple of them started making puppets out of anything handy - to expand the cast, so to speak. I got talked into regular performances, and we worked out a schedule." He smiled. "They were cheesy, but it was all the entertainment we had. Even the guards watched. Coming up with new skits was therapy for me too, kept my mind off my troubles – like how short the rations were getting. I figured none of us had more than a couple months, so I just decided to be as funny and entertaining as possible, right up till the end.

"Then one fine morning we saw about a million contrails in the sky, and two hours later Alliance troops were marching down the road to the prison. I'll never forget it. The first one through the gate looked at me and threw up. Course, he hadn't seen the ones who couldn't make it out of barracks. The triage medics decided I wasn't going to die anytime soon as long as they fed me, so they kept me there for another three days and sent me up with the second wave. I counted every ship that lifted until my turn came."

Mal nodded, remembering the weeks-long evacuation of Serenity Valley. Men had died of wounds, died of shock, and died of broken hearts watching those boats lift. "How long were they mending you?"

"Months. They had to undo a lot of the improper healing and start over. Lots of surgeries. But-" He flexed his hand and rolled his head. "Good as new, about. I get achy when the weather changes."

"Weather changes. Aboard a ship in space."

"Exactly." Wash nodded. "Another fringe benefit."

Mal looked out the window at the stars. "Spose you got a hero's welcome when you got out of the hospital and went home."

"Actually, no. After I got out of the hospital, the powers-that-be had to find something for me to do. The standard term of enlistment was for two years, but when the War started, the fine print defined it a little differently - until cessation of hostilities. Core science doesn't leave its wounded disabled; there's no such thing as medical discharge. I was classed fit for return to duty twenty-six months after the crash.

"But by then, the Navy didn't need me anymore. Serenity Valley was over, and most of the Rim was in Alliance hands. Armed resistance was down to a few redoubts not worth the trouble of taking. Peace feelers were being extended on both sides. I was out of a job, but not out of the business, because once the Navy invoked the 'emergency' clause to extend my time, they were as bound by it as I was." Wash leaned back in his chair, crossed his feet on top of the console, and laced his fingers together behind his head. "So they found a job for me. Doing about what you see me doing right now. You remember me telling you that I was laconic in flight school?"

"It was a memorable occasion. We were tied up and blindfolded, as I recall."

"Yeah, well. It's easy to be a man of few words when you're alone in the room. They gave me an instructor's position at a school that was an empty shell – fully staffed and equipped, but no students. The place was budgeted for three more years, need it or not, and it became a kind of dumping ground. I was assigned a classroom and a course to teach. I was required to file lesson plans and all the other paperwork – attendance lists, even. And go there every schoolday during class hours. But the only time I actually lectured - only time I shared the room with another person, actually - was when the school commandant audited my class for my quarterly eval." The pilot grinned. "Colonel Washington, he was. He came in at the start of class time and sat in the back, as if the room was packed with students. I'd deliver my day's instruction to an imaginary full house. And, since one of the items on the colonel's checklist was 'ability to engage students', I'd address questions to the empty room, then act as if I couldn't decide who to call on. I'd point to a vacant chair, pause, and say something like, 'Flare effect! Excellent answer, Cadet Nemo!' He took it all very seriously, because he was only a year from retirement, and he didn't want any bad marks on his final fitness report. So he made sure all the t's were dotted and i's crossed."

Mal grinned, thinking of some of the fussbudget commanders he'd had during the war. "Didn't wear a mustache, by any chance?"

River appeared at the hatch, a plenitude of thin silver ribbons draped about her head and shoulders and hanging from her fingers. "We can still use it. But I don't think we'll get it back in the box."

"Hello, little crazy person," said the pilot, putting his feet down and turning. "What are you doing with all that bridging tape?"

"I'm modeling. Pretend I'm a Norway spruce. Kaylee says using it for tinsel won't hurt it any, but she'll have to find something to wind it on after we take down the tree." She turned to Mal. "Pretty?"

Mal gave Wash a glance to see how worried he should be about a goodly supply of spare whatever-it-was being used for holiday decorations. But the pilot seemed relaxed and amused. "Uh, yeah. Real nice. Probly look even better on the Christmas tree."

The crazy girl gave him an eye roll and turned to leave. Then she stopped and turned back. "December twenty-fifth isn't Yeshwa's birthday," River said. Her eyes roved the pair a little apprehensively, as if she wasn't sure she should go on, or even what she might say next. "He was born in the fall. The early Church observed it near the winter solstice to attract converts from other religions who had their own end-of-the-year holidays."

"Huh," Mal said. "Can't say I'm surprised to hear commercializing Christmas started with the Church."

The pilot raised his brows. "Yeshwa?"

"His real name." She moved toward the door, seeming embarrassed. "It was mispronounced in translation, getting a little farther off with each language it was filtered through." She disappeared through the hatch. A moment later, her voice came through the opening from the bottom of the stairs, sounding almost apologetic. "The year is wrong, too."

Wash turned his seat forward. "Got to say, Mal, I'm a little surprised to see a Christmas tree in the lounge."

Mal folded his arms. "I like a party much as anybody, Wash. And givin and getting of gifts is a fine thing, and warms the heart. We'll eat better this week than we will the rest of the year, and only a fool would curl his lip at that. And if little Kaylee wants to put up a tree to hang shiny on, I got no problem putting down along the way somewhere and cutting her one. But if anybody gets the urge to start talkin about 'the reason for the season', they better wait till I'm out of the room."

"Not much danger of that. I think you and the Shepherd reached an understanding a long time ago. And, even if you hadn't, he's the un-preachiest missionary I ever met. Sometimes I wonder what he believes in, to be honest."

"Far as I'm concerned, that statement holds for any man of the cloth. They-"

The bridge windows lit up, and the two men were bathed in white light. Wash snatched at the yoke and froze. "Wo de tien ah!"

"Wash?" Mal said, voice rising. It looked like an imminent collision with some other ship whose lights were shining into the bridge. Why wasn't the man doing something?

Why wasn't the collision alarm screaming?

Wash continued to stare out the window at the hard point of light seeming only a few hundred yards dead ahead. "It's a star."

"Zao gao. How can it be a star? And how did we get so gorram close to it?"

"No, no. It's, like, light years away. Maybe thousands of light years away." Wash shaded his eyes with a hand then took it away. The illumination wasn't blinding, really, just enough to cast shadows in the night-lighted bridge. But, coming sudden and unexpected out of the Black, it had seemed a whole lot brighter at first. "It's a supernova. An exploding star. The last time anybody saw one this bright was in 1054."

"So it's harmless?"

Wash flipped some switches and studied readouts. "Yeah. It might have been the cause of the grav blips, but they were no danger. Radiation's scarcely above normal background. It's just a light show. Once-in-a-lifetime."

Mal pulled the microphone out of its holder. "This is the captain. Anybody wants to see a once-in-a-lifetime light show come on up to the bridge."

Mal let the pilot make explanations as the rest of the crew appeared: the Shepherd, who descended the stairs to the lower deck at the front of the bridge and stared raptly with his nose almost touching the glass; Zoe, who came to stand beside her husband, seeming to take most of her pleasure from her husband's enjoyment; Simon, who studied the sight with an unreadable expression, his thoughts seemingly as distant as the exploding star; Kaylee, clapping her hands in wonder; Jayne, who'd come through the hatch with a rifle, and now stood staring at the assembly with no more than the occasional glance out the window.

Mal said, "Where's River and Inara?"

"Watching from her shuttle," Simon said. "They saw it through the windows."

Mal grunted. River had been spending more time with Inara than previous, since the Companion's return to the ship. Mal had figured that, with Kaylee and Simon spending more alone time together, the girl had just been looking for someone to talk to, and listening was one of Inara's professional skills, after all.

And Inara was keeping to herself more than usual, just lately. That wasn't quite the way of it: actually, she wasn't speaking to him since day before yesterday, and avoiding anyplace she might run into him. They'd started trading words over her leaving, voices rising as they'd moved on to other grievances, and she'd bit the end off their argument by telling him she loved him. I love you, Mal, she'd said for the first time ever, but I swear I don't know if I can share a ship with you anymore, much less give you what you want from me. Then she'd turned about and walked off, leaving him staring speechless after. She'd been parked in her shuttle ever since, waiting, he suspected, for him to come to her.

Kaylee whispered in Simon's ear, and tugged him towards the door.

"Hey," Mal said. "Tired of it already?"

The little mechanic dimpled. "We're gonna go catch it from the other shuttle. More quiet-like."

"Ain't natural," Jayne said uneasily. "Stars don't even twinkle out in the Black. They sure as hell don't turn into landing beacons. Next thing, the worlds'll all reverse their orbits and we'll never find the one we're aimin for again."

Wash grinned. "Wouldn't that be an adventure."

Book climbed the ladder back up to the bridge. "It's beautiful," the Shepherd said. "A shining symbol of hope, just in time for Christmas. Really makes you think, doesn't it?"

The muscles at the hinge of Mal's jaw bunched. "It makes me think about the worlds that mighta been circling that star. Worlds like ours, maybe, full of people of one kind or another. People who got tossed into a furnace to give us our pretty light show." He looked at Wash. "And how it might have happened more than once in the past. Say, fifteen hundred years before." He turned a harder look on the Shepherd. "And a thousand before that, bout the time a Roman governor called for a nose count in Judea." He turned for the hatch. "And I wonder how soon it's gonna be our turn."

Book called to him from the top of the stairs. "Mal."

"Don't start with me, preacher." He kicked at his door and stepped on the rung.

"Don't let one lost battle steal your faith in God, man."

He scoffed. "What kinda jackass only believes in God so long as God's on his side?" He descended the ladder and let it swing shut above him.

Mal lay sleepless in his bunk for a long while, hands under his head, staring at the steel overhead as he imagined the fierce starlight bathing the hull outside. Then he scoffed, rose, and went to his dresser. He opened the top drawer and reached all the way to the back, pushing aside everyday items until his fingers touched a small parcel of cloth, which he tucked into a shirt pocket. Then he climbed his ladder and headed for the bridge.

He was surprised to see Wash alone on the bridge, contemplating the nova's dazzle. "Everybody get tired of the show?"

The pilot gave him an odd look, then glanced away. The planes of his face were sharp in the hard light. "You might say that. The sense of wonder kind of waned after you left. Besides, according to River, these things stay bright for at least a month." Wash glanced at him again. "Can't sleep?"

"No." He fingered the object in his pocket. "If you'd rather be somewhere else, like maybe sharing time with your wife, I'll finish the watch." It was a frequent offer; Mal's sleeping habits were nearly as irregular as River's.

Wash got up and left without another word.

Mal brought out the little parcel, unwrapped it, and stood staring at the crucifix he hadn't worn in seven years. He twined his fingers in the chain, feeling the links rasp against his calluses. Then he went to the top of the forward stairs and sat, elbows on knees and hands loosely clasped, letting the cross dangle against his wrist.

"I got my hands together 'cause that's how I was taught to talk to God when I was little. I'm not feelin particularly respectful right now." He scoffed again. "Fact is, I'm near certain I'm talkin to myself. But my heart is heavy, and I got no one else to talk to right now, so You're elected, even if You're not listenin and don't care what I got to say.

"I know most folks'll tell you that it's not man's place to judge God. Who, then? What kinda father doesn't care if his kids are proud of him? My way 'o thinkin, when a man brings a child into the world, he's responsible for it. He's accountable to that child, even if that child can't understand his decisions, and he surely needs to give a better reason than 'cause I'm your father and I said so', or 'someday you'll understand'."

He stared at the cross brushing his wrist. It had been a farewell gift from his mother when he'd enlisted, a protective talisman that he'd accepted for her ease as much as his own. In dark times, it had been as much a remembrance of her as of the Almighty, and always brought her face to mind when he'd kissed it. "People think I lost my faith on Hera, left it behind in Serenity Valley. What happened there galls me, right enough, but what happened there had already happened to us time and again on a smaller scale. I'd already figured out that there was more to some of our nonsensical orders than squabblin among the factions, that there were men high in the Movement that were just out for themselves, using us dumb farmers for counters in a different game. It was the cause that I fought for, not them, and it still seems good to me, whether You approve or not.

"No, I got my eyes opened bout God a bit at a time – by men in robes, not blood and gore. Some of the same people who are so sure it's a sin to judge God got no trouble over claimin to know Your mind and speak with Your voice. I watched the Core church march in behind the Khangs like a second army. They made rice converts by the thousands when the Alliance burned all their crops and livestock and stamped local governments into the dirt and walked away.

"And I saw what a man o' God will do to keep his place at the head of his flock, too. There was a preacher on Shadow – not our church, but mighty popular - who used to foam at the mouth as he pounded the pulpit, goin on about the 'idolators' in the Church of Man. That same preacher's got a fine new church and a local vid show on Sundays. He's also got an Alliance flag standin six feet from the altar, and he calls the Church of Man the 'Mother Church' now, and talks about reconciling differences. Meanwhile, our pastor, who never said anything about the Church of Man except that they should leave folks alone, finds half his parishioners' offerings goin to taxes, and his ministry last on the list for everything rationed, from fuel to plumbin repair. Pretty soon, all the churches that are left'll be teachin it's a sin to rebel, or some such. That'll be worse than losin the War, by my sight."

He looked out at the point of cold light shining in at him. "A God who's all-powerful is responsible for everything too, and if He can't be bothered to explain all the hurt and craziness He does to His children, and lets jackals like those use Him for their own ends, He doesn't deserve worship. And that's where we stand, I reckon."

A shoe sole scuffed the deck just inside the hatch. Mal turned. Shepherd Book looked up from his Bible to give the captain a startled look. "Captain." The old preacher glanced at Mal's hands. "I'm interrupting. I'm sorry." He started to back out of the compartment.

"This isn't what it looks like, Shepherd," Mal said, gathering up the necklace and dropping it back into his pocket. "It was my mother's. Holidays just make me a mite sentimental, is all. Come on in." He took the pilot's seat.

Book placed a hand on the stair rail. "Trouble sleeping?"

"Head's just full of everything that might go wrong on Viking. You?"

Book stared at the unquiet star ahead. "I've been thinking about what you said. Your words have the ring of truth to me."

"Wai. Shepherd, I don't know anything about exploding stars."

"Not that part. The last." He turned from the view to Mal. "I'm that kind of jackass, I'm afraid. I don't mean that I ever felt the loss of God's regard. But I defined myself by my cause, and maybe defined God by it as well. When I became unsure that what I was doing was God's work, it was a sore loss of my surety of heaven's welcome."

Mal grunted. Shepherd Book was a mighty unusual grayshirt: a complex man with a simple faith, the only sort Mal felt he could respect. Mal had often wondered how long Book had been a preacher, and what he'd done during the War. "Never thought you were always a preacher. You act like a man who fought."

"Oh, I fought, Captain. Longer than you. And the Alliance beat me just as soundly." Book shook his head. "Only, most of that time, I thought we were winning. But eventually I realized that we'd fallen back to regroup too often, that our defeats weren't 'minor setbacks,' that we were fighting a rearguard action and the war was already lost."

"What battles were you in, Shepherd?"

"None you'd recognize. It wasn't the same war." He looked out the windows at the stars. "I don't claim to know His plans anymore. I ask Him every day for guidance. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't. On the days it doesn't, I can't say whether He wasn't telling or if I just wasn't listening hard enough." The old man turned away. "But I'm sure He's always listening to me, and interested in what I have to say, because I'm certain I'm part of His plans."

Mal turned to glare at the old man. "You were here the whole time."

"No, Captain." Book paused at the hatch. "Just the last few sentences as I was coming up the stair and through the door. But it was enough to guess all the rest. Merry Christmas."

When Mal was quite sure the old preacher was gone, he turned back to the window and stared out. "Merry Christmas."