ITHE ITINERANT CHRISTMAS TREE

The BoyWho BroughtChristmas

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Old ManLedbetter came jolting along the stony mountain road in an ox cart, the tin-tipped ends of the shoe-string that confined his plaited beard dancing upon his breast, his hazel whipstock lying at his feet, and a hard, stumpy hand spread out upon either knee to hold himself steady. Without any gee-hawing on his part his yoked steeds turned at the ford and staggered clumsily intothe Junaluska. In midstream a shallow swirl of water came circling about his feet, but, though he may have pressed his hands harder upon his knees, the only perceptible preparation he made for a possible submerging was the shifting of his tobacco into the other cheek.

But from the footlog below, a call, piping but authoritative, challenged his attention.

“Hi, gran’daddy! he didn’t cross the log; you reckon he waded the branch? Dixie and me’s done lost the trail!”

“Gee up,” the old man reached for his whip and was soon upon the sandyterra firmaof the other side, submissively awaiting his grandson’s pleasure.

“Here, sir, here!” The puzzled Dixie had his nose pressed down to an equivocal impression where the sand of the road had spread itselfthrough the weedy border. “Now foller, old boy; foller I say!”

“The puzzled Dixie had his nose pressed down to an equivocal impression where the sand of the road had spread itself through the weedy border”

The gesture of the grimy little hand was imperative, and Dixie sniffed among the dried weeds; then, closely nosing the ground, circled among the cart wheels but, baffled, squatted whimpering upon his haunches.

“You-all trackin’ a rabbit, Grover Cleveland?” The old man facetiously scrutinized both dog and boy.

In the North Carolina mountains there were in the time of my story and still are many namesakes of the great democrat, but our little hero was recognized far and wide as the child of the party. A sturdy, clear-eyed, true-hearted little mountaineer, the party was proud of him and no one ever gave him anything less than his full Christian name.

He was an orphan and grandmotherless; he and his grandfather lived alone, with no woman to keep them comfortable. These facts alonewould have secured for him abundant sympathy from a simple-hearted, kindly people; but, in addition to these titles to favour, his grandfather was respected as an upright man and one of the oldest and richest residents of the county, owning many acres of land—not of richest quality to be sure—but as good as any for enumeration. So for miles around the child was welcomed into every mountain cabin, and no home so poor that he was permitted to leave it without some token of its owner’s kindly interest, a pair of home-spun, home-knit stockings or mittens or a needed patch upon jacket or trousers.

He was a very small boy to be out in the woods alone with his dog; for, though the sunny slopes were warm, deciduous foliage lay rustling or sodden upon the ground and snow whitened the shaded clefts and hollows of the higher peaks. His old soft hat covered only the back ofhis head and in front of it a fringe of blond hair bristled aggressively above blue eyes that scintillated with excitement. He wore clumsy copper-toed shoes and warm stockings wrinkled about his ankles, the dangling ends of the parti-coloured strings that gartered them showing below the short patched trousers.

“No!” he cried disdainfully, as if he had years ago lost interest in small game, “it’s old Sandy Claus! Cap’n Wiley says he’s got a den somewheres up on the Bald. He’s been down to the Pistopals’ meetin’-house and left ’em a whole pack of things and they’re a-goin’ to hang every last one of ’em on to a tree; and a-Chrisamus all the Pistopal girls and boys is goin’ to pick ’em off for keeps. But he ain’t left nary thing for the Methdises, or the Presaterians or the Red-Baptises or the Yaller-Baptises. Don’t you reckon that’s a low-down trick, gran’daddy?He was down yer last night agin with another pack o’ things for ’em and he come afoot this time for me and Dixie’s tracked him; we’ve done follered his tracks to the ford but we can’t strike his trail on t’other side. Git out, gran’daddy, and help us!”

“Yaas, Grover Cleveland, granddad’ll shore do what he kin for you,” the old man kept a serious face and began a clumsy descent, “but what you aim to do when you come on to him? You aim to clean him out?”

“No, I ain’t goin’ to tech nary thing ’thout he tells me; but I aim to let on to him that the Red-Baptises and the Yaller-Baptises and the Presaterians is jes’ as good as the Pistopals; and the Methdises is a heap better’n any of ’em (you and me is Methdises, ain’t we gran’daddy?) and I don’t guess he’ll think I’m a storyin’; do you gran’daddy?”

“Not if he’s as knowin’ as I take him to be, he won’t.”

Gran’daddy mounted the footlog and steadied himself by the hand rail as he crossed, while boy and dog scampered like squirrels ahead of him. On the other side he pretended to identify every print the boy discovered as track of deer, coon, bear, or catamount; there was nothing indefinite that might stand for a possible Santa Claus.

“He must have waded a right smart,” there was a disappointed quiver in the shrill treble, “so’s to throw us off the track; you reckon he kept to the branch as far up as the mill, gran’daddy?”

“It looks right much like he’s just criss-crossed first one side the branch and then t’other; anyway he’s got the sleight of coverin’ up his tracks. I reckon we’ll have to give it up, Grover Cleveland. Gran’daddy’s powerful rushed for time to-day.”

The old man recrossed the log, got into the wagon, and started on his jogging way, the boy a quiet, drooping little figure beside him.

“That’s a mighty low-down trick in Old Sandy Claus to take and leave you out, Grover Cleveland. Them Pistopals is the no-countest critters to be found in these yer mountings.”

“If I was the boss of all the meetin’-houses I wouldn’t have any but jes’ one, so’s Old Sandy Claus ’ud have to do ’em all alike,” the treble weakened and the boy gazed off into the woods with suspicious intensity.

“Now don’t you go to takin’-on, Grover Cleveland; maybe you and me can git up a Christmas tree all to ourselves; how’d that do? I reckon ole gran’dad’s about as rich right now as ary somebody round yer. I’ve just sold Copperhead Hill to the mining company and got the money down, two hundred and five dollars!” For a moment the old man gloatedin silence over his wealth, for among these North Carolina mountaineers commerce is mostly carried on by barter and cash in hand is a scarce commodity.

“The Pistopals’ Chrisamus tree is only jes’ a holly”—gradually as the new idea had possessed his mind the limp little head had faced front again—“I clum up into that thar fiddle-leaf poplar that grows front of the meetin’-house winder and looked in, and there ain’t many berries on it at all; there’s a heap prettier ones in our woods.”

“Certainly there is, Grover Cleveland. There’s a hundred in Whiteoak Gulley that’s jes’ the shape of a yaller-pine burr, and all shinin’ with berries. You and me’ll take Butterfly and Bonaparte up thar and we’ll haul one of them ar holly bushes down to the house right soon, we will.”

“Them Pistopals has got theirssot up in a box like it growed there.” The blue eyes, though encircled with a tale-telling sedimentary deposit, were now lifted brightly to the kind old face and for gran’daddy there was no retreat.

“By gum, we’ll set our tree up in a box in our t’other room like it growed there too.”

“And le’s don’t jes’ you and me have it all to ourselves, gran’daddy. Le’s have something for Vance Long and Harve Edney too; his pa’s a Red Baptis’ and his ma’s a Methdis’, but I reckon Harve’s the biggest part Methdis’ cause he never does me mean. And I’d be proud to put a hymn-book on for Suly Jordan; she sings so good and she tied up my toe in turpentine that day I stubbed it. And there’s Zeb’lon, old Aunt Dicey’s gran’son—looks like he’s growed bigger’n there’s any call for—but he has troubles yet jes’ like little fellers. Ole man Sumter, he shotZeb’s tame deer last Friday, and Zeb and me, we got to it ’fore it was plumb dead and it looked up at Zeb, and Zeb he cried sure-’nough tears, he did. So you see Zeb’s only a boy yet and I don’t want to forgit him a-Chrisamus.”

“Yaas, Grover Cleveland, we’ll have a present on that ar tree for Zeb and Suly and for every Methdis’ boy and girl in Junaluska. There can’t be more’n a dozen of ’em since old man Simpson and his children and his gran’children and all his kinfolks left and jined the Baptises. And you can count their mas and their pas in too. But I’ll have to depend on you a heap, Grover Cleveland, gran’daddy never did see a Christmas tree in all his life; it’s a new institution in these mountings. Now if your gran’ma or your ma was alive they could help us out o’ this scrape, but”——he leaned over, trailed his whiplashin the sand and watched it reminiscently.

“And there’s two or three old women I want to remember; there’s old Aunt Dicey, she and your gran’ma was always close friends. I believe I’ll put a new frock on the Christmas tree for her. And ’way off up in Cutter’s Cove there’s Dan Cutter’s widow; she and your gran’ma was girls together, a pretty pair, too. I won’t pass her by. And just ’cross the branch from her is where Sam Long’s got his family stowed away. His mother—she’s a queer ole stick as ever was—but they do say that Sam’s wife does the old woman mean, so I’ll give her a frock just to show ’em all that she’s some thought of. If them old critters don’t see a Christmas tree this year, the chances is they’ll die ’thout ever seein’ one. Haw, Bonaparte! By gum, if we’d a’ been a steam car we’d have run plumb over old Mis’ Jimson’scow; ’pears like she ain’t got heart in her to get out of the way; I reckon that pore old somebody ain’t got enough for herself to eat, let alone the cow. Gran’son, you jes’ get over in behind thar and heave her out that thar corn that’s under the bag of meal.”

“Ain’t she a Pistopal cow, gran’daddy?”

“I ’low she is, gran’son, but she’s got a whole rotation of stomachs and when they’re all hungry at once it must give her a powerful gone feelin’. I’ll put on a new frock for old Mis’ Jimson. I don’t reckon she ever had a store frock in her life and she ain’t so old yet but what she can turn out of her loom a frock that’ll outwear three of the store kind, but it’ll be a change for her.”

“O but, gran’daddy! gran’daddy! them Pistopals is right mean, they are, and ole Mis’ Jimson’s a Pistopal!”

“So she is, Grover Cleveland, so she is. I never thought of that”—for a minute they jogged along in silence—“I can’t somehow ’count for that, gran’son; thar’s a mistake somewhar—Mis’ Jimson’s a good woman. Anyway she can’t git down to the Pistopal meetin’-house a-Christmas; she’s got a risin’ on her leg.”

“Why, gran’daddy, old Mis’ Jimson can’t go anywhere! She couldn’t even git into this yer wagon so as we-all could carry her!”

“I’m ’feared you’re right, Grover Cleveland; now that’s another difficulty——”

“And all them other old women, gran’daddy—how’re they going to git down to our Chrisamus tree, and how’re they goin’ to git back again?”

“That certainly is a puzzler, gran’son. I reckon we-all will have to sleep on to that. If your mother wasalive now, she’d know just how to take hold”——the old man dropped his elbows upon his knees, doubling himself in sad retrospection, and the little boy slipped off the seat in an effort to imitate the position. On his knees, holding to the front of the wagon box, he solved the problem.

“Hi, gran’daddy!” he shouted, clutching the old man’s trouserlegs to help himself to his feet, “me and you’ll stand that ar Chrisamus tree up in the wagon and we’ll hitch Bonaparte and Butterfly to it and we’ll carry it round an’ pick it as we go!”

“That’sthe talk, Grover Cleveland!” the old man brought down upon his knee a big emphatic hand covering there two little wincing ones; “your ma’d have thought of that, too.”

“And I don’t want to pass any boy’s or girl’s house without stoppin’, gran’daddy, even if they’s Pistopals;I ain’t mad at ary one of ’em but Williebelle Greenlee, and now I done forgot what I’m mad at her for.”

“I don’t aim to ’lowance you, Grover Cleveland. I aim to let you get a stick of peppermint or horehoun’ for every boy and girl in Junaluska. I aim to let you show Old Sandy how the thing ought to be did. And I don’t reckon I’ll pass by any old woman, either, jes’ ’cause she’s been misled and jined the wrong church; it’s bad enough to lose your way without bein’ hounded for it besides.”

“What makes Baptises and Methdises an’ Presaterians an’ all them, gran’daddy? Was they borned that way?”

“You an’ me was, Grover Cleveland; our kinfolks was Methdises from way back before the flood I reckon; but the rest of ’em they’re mostly jes’ mixin’s.”

“When I come acrost the cattleon the mountings, I can tell by the slits in their ears who owns ’em; but I can’t tell what church owns the people round yer ’thout it’s meetin’-Sunday and I can see what meetin’-house they’re headin’ for. Have they got any ear-marks thatyouknow ’em by, gran’daddy?”

“No they ain’t Grover Cleveland; they ain’t none of ’em branded that-a-way.”

“What makes ’em diff’rent, gran’daddy?”

“It’s the way they b’lieve, gran’son. The Methdises they b’lieve in free grace and sprinklin’, and the Baptises they b’lieve in sousin’, and the Presaterians—they’re right mean, they are—they b’lieve in ’lection.”

“Mighty nigh every somebody round yer went to ’lection and voted that Tuesday, gran’daddy.”

“So we did gran’son, so we did; but this yer Presaterian ’lectionis somehow diff’rent. It’s a powerful low-down kind of ’lection—I reckon it’s favourin’ niggers votin’.”

After waiting a few seconds for this theological seed to sink deep the old man went on.

“An’ them Pistopals—I’m feared I’m a little in the dark as to their belief—but they must be mighty good scholars, for they kin read like lightnin’. They kin read a psa’m so fast that common folks can’t take in the sense of what they’re sayin’. And there’s another good thing about ’em: they do rev’rence the name of the Lord in the Sunday sarvice; they bow considdable low when they come to it. Only it does look like they don’t all of ’em carry their rev’rence ’round with ’em a-week-days; there’s Cap’n Campbell, he can cuss considdable and he don’t do no bowin’ when he calls on the name of the Lord a-week-days.”

“Hi, gran’daddy! the storekeeper’swife she’s a Pistopal—and Monday, when she was scoopin’ up a pound of crackers for me, some mice run out of the cracker box and she jes’ hollered out, ‘For the Lord’s sake!’ and she didn’t bow and she didn’t look solemn, ary one.”

“Gran’son, I’ve read that there third commandment a heap of times and I can’t see as it provides for any week-day privileges or indulgences. When a man’s cussin’ mad, tain’t so powerful ill for him to bat the old devil’s name about some but, Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to triflin’ with the name of the Lord; that’s uncommon low down, that is.

“There used to formerly be only one kind of Baptises here and they warshipped in the old red church. But ole man Jordan he got his back up and he took all his kin-people away and he built another church and he painted it yaller. You seehe had a whole mountain of timber land that he was glad to get cleared off, and his sons run a sawmill, and there’s a big bed of yaller ochre right back of his house. He was smart enough to set ’em all to work, while they was red-hot mad. If he’d a give ’em time to cool off, that ar yaller meetin’-house never would been built. They did cool off before they got the chimbly up and to this day they’re a tryin’ to praise the Lord with their stovepipe a-stickin’ out the winder.”

“There’s too many kinds of ’em for old Sandy to git round to ’em all,” said the small boy persistently, returning to his first sorrow.

“Sometimes it looks to me like there’s too many kinds for the Lord to get round to ’em all, gran’son. There’s some big cities where there’s more kinds than we’ve got here. There’s two or three kinds of Meth’-dises and there’s Free-will Baptisesand Holinesses, and they all seem to be workin’ for the same end, only they can’t agree to work together. But, of course, people’s got a right to all the religious differences they can pay for; but here in Junaluska we’re too poor to have so many churches.”

“How did there git to be so many kinds, gran’daddy?”

“’Twas zeal, Grover Cleveland. And there’s another point where gran’daddy ain’t exactly clear in his mind. Zeal must be a good thing; St. Paul he owned up that he had it, and yet—I reckon zeal’s like ’lectric’ty, it’s a powerful power for good so long as it’s kept in leaders; but you let ’lectric’ty go rarin’ round promiscuous and it’ll rip things all to flinderations. Eight years ago we had jes’ one church in Junaluska and we had a preacher all to ourselves; we didn’t let him starve to death or freeze to death, ary one. He liveddown thar in my log cabin and he had his own roastin’-ear patch and a garden and a orchard. He had a horse of his own and there wasn’t a cabin in any of these mountain gullies that he didn’t know his way to, and there wasn’t a cabin where he wasn’t looked up to and respected. But by and by folks of diff’rent b’liefs came settlin’ round here. They was all powerful pious and they was all bustin’ with zeal, each one for his own ’religious denomination’ as they called it. And—well—I never could contrive just how they done it—but tollable soon there was five diff’rent churches in Junaluska and no more religion than there was before; unless pullin’ and haulin’ and each one tryin’ to git ahead of the other constitutes religion, which I’m doubtful if it do. And more’n that there ain’t work enough nor ham and hominy enough in Junaluska for more than one preacher. Themquestions of yours has set me to studyin’, Grover Cleveland.”

So gran’daddy folded himself together and “studied” the rest of the way, while his grandson, making the most of his little brief authority, yelled so conflicting commands at the puzzled oxen that they took their head and in due time drew the rattling old wagon safe into the home barn yard.

A scarlet-beaded holly, fresh from the forests of the North Carolina mountains, is a Christmas Tree the wealthiest church in Christendom might covet. Such a one our heroes fixed upright and firm in the shackly old farm wagon. It seemed to grow from a soil deeply top dressed with corn fodder.

The resources of the one little store at the village were meagre but the genius of the decorators was not versatile. Gran’daddy chivalrously intended for the old women to havethe best and in his eyes a new frock was a princely gift. As for the old men, what so appropriate and acceptable as a paper of plug tobacco. At this stage his ingenuity was exhausted and his grandson did the rest.

If there was anything that Grover Cleveland liked better than candy, it was more candy, and though he was unlearned in the letter of the Golden Rule its spirit was inherent in his nature. So, although the storekeeper had laid in an extra supply for the holiday trade (it was all in sticks, the kind in vogue when grandmas were little girls), when our small Santa Claus had made his purchases there was none left in stock and by the time material for seventeen calico gowns had been measured off, the storekeeper, among whose mental endowments the commercial instinct was not prominent, had persuaded himself that it was a crying injustice that the well-filled shelvesof which he had been so proud should have been depleted at one purchase.

As much chagrined as pitiful, he watched his opportunity, and when Grover Cleveland, who was “toting” his packages from the store to the wagon where his grandfather sat, was gathering up his last armful he called him to a rear window.

“Do you see that ar woman toilin’ up the mountain with a poke on her back?”

“Ye-e-s!” cried the child, “and she’s got a little boy with her a heap littler than me!”

“That woman’s yer Aunt Calliny; and that ar little boy’s your own cousin. Don’t you think one of them caliker frocks ought to go to her and some of that candy to little Jakey? Why, he’s named for your gran’daddy.”

The loyal little grandson turned away dispiritedly saying only:

“She done gran’daddy mean.”

“And that ar little feller’s shoes isthe raggedest you ever see,” this last remark was flung after the boy who was making a rapid exit.

The Ledbetter homestead was some distance from the highroad behind a screen of hills, and an old shed into which the afternoon sun shone with warm approval afforded privacy for the trimming of the tree. Though one pair of hands trembled with age and one pair with eagerness, as early as the twenty-second of December it stood in glorious completeness. The calico frocks, tightly rolled and tied with twine, swung from the stoutest branches, while the twigs bore fruit of plug tobacco and candy in wasteful and bewildering abundance.

“Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five,” counted the tired little Santa Claus as he lay on his bed that night. Three æons the days seemed to him and he sighed himself off to the land of Nod. The old man too slipped smoothly offto sleep, but he sighed as he went to think that time flies so fast. Dixie took no note of time, but before morning he took note of a bear that came nosing about the premises, attracted by the smell of sweets, and he barked so frantically as to bring the old man upon the spot armed with a musket that had seen service in ’61. Bruin retired from the scene with a leaden Christmas gift under his hide and gran’daddy wrapped himself in a tattered cloak of army gray and patrolled till morning. He felt hardly equal to two more nights of keeping guard, so he said to his grandson over their early breakfast:

“This is a mighty pretty day and it might rain a-Christmas.”

So they made out their itinerary at once and, though they were subject to some delays and gran’daddy remarked as he groped for his gloves in the wood box among dish towels,frying pans, broken dishes, and wearing apparel, “It’s quare what a way things has of skulking out of sight when they’re wanted,” and the little boy replied as he tore a strip from a window curtain and gartered his stocking, “It’s ’cause we ain’t got no woman here to keep ’em in their place,” by sunrise the oxen were hitched up and the premature Christmas tree started on its journey.

It was a day of gentle, insinuative, persistent sunshine, such as in these mountains December is not chary of. The frost-sheathed trees of the highest ridges lay like a long fluff of white ostrich feathers against the azure; light snows and partial thaws had converted the nearer mountain sides into a darkly crayoned network of lines and angles upon a dappled ground; all around them clustered the innumerable beauties of the winter landscape, and only the roads were vile.

The old man looked a veritable Santa Claus. Recognizing the churchly significance of the occasion, he had unbraided his beard and it fell before him a rippling, silver shield; beneath his gray slouch hat his kind eyes twinkled in their coverts of shaggy beetle-brows and, unconsciously completing the picture, he had discarded his tobacco for a corn-cob pipe.

Beside him, his little heart a-flutter but his face held resolutely serious, sat his grandson and between them sat Dixie for, in recognition of his services of the night, he too had been advanced to the position of a Santa Claus and in a far corner of the wagon, where the benefactor would not be tempted to test for himself the comparative blessedness of giving and receiving, was a stack of bones (there had been a “killing” the day before) for Dixie to bestow upon his canine acquaintances.

To old Mis’ Jimson the tree was carried in pristine completeness. From the well where she was trying to persuade her cow that a handful of meal in two gallons of water is mush, she espied its green top coming up behind the hill. For a moment she watched it grow, but before the oxen came into sight she hobbled away in terror to her cabin.

“I knowed it,” she said. “I knowed that ar owl a-hootin’ ’fore the door all night, meant some kind of meanness. ‘Trees as men walkin’”—she paraphrased unwittingly, and she didn’t know whether the text was history or prophecy. But she grabbed her testament from off the shelf and a rabbit’s foot from out the button box, reassuring herself by a swift glance that it was the left hind one (no other “keeps a man from harm”), pressed the two together, and ventured to take another look. Sherecognized the oxen, the wagon, and its occupants. Her terror fled, but she stood transfixed with amazement.

“Mis’ Jimson, this ’ere’s a sure ’nough Chrisamas tree,” called Grover Cleveland.

She hobbled down to the gate. “What upon airth, Jakey Ledbetter?” she asked.

Her old neighbour’s answer was an impressive silence while his unsteady hands plucked from the tree a roll of blue calico. “We reckoned, Grover Cleveland and me did, that this yer sprigged pattern would be becomin’ to your build,” he said presenting it.

“You ain’t tellin’ me that this yer’s for me!”—she smoothed out a fold with a quivering motion of her rheumatic old hand—“Colonel Ledbetter, I neverdidhave a store frock before and it’s more’n I ever expected to own in this world.”

“Moo-o,” complained the cow and overturned the bucket, whereupon an avalanche of “roughness” descended upon her head.

“La me,” exclaimed Mis’ Jimson, “is Christmas trees for the dumb critters too?”

“That’s the view Grover Cleveland ’pears to take of it. Thar’s enough for one fodderin’ gran’son; we’ll drive round and put the rest in the shed.”

Shielding her eyes with her hand the old woman watched them out of sight. “I ain’t been carin’ lately whether I was livin’ or not,” she mused, “but if Christmas trees is beginnin’ to circolate in these yer mountings, I aim to perk up and live long enough to git my share.”

Most of the old people who were young when gran’daddy was a boy still occupied their fathers’ holdings in clefts and coves up in the highermountains and to them the tree was carried while the sunshine still slanted and the roads were unthawed. Time flies or I would tell of its triumphant journey; how faded eyes grew bright and wrinkles wreathed themselves into smiles; how salutations and jokes fresh fifty years ago tripped upon the tongue as nimbly as in their early days. Only one failed to respond to the Christmas spirit of the occasion. That was old Captain Sumter. They came upon him leaning over his remnant of front fence viciously fletcherizing tobacco of his own unskillful curing.

“What fool consarn’s that, Jake Ledbetter?” he growled as the turnout stopped before him.

“It’s a Chrisamus tree,” called Grover Cleveland, scrambling to the ground and presenting him with a package of choice Durham.

The old man pocketed it but histhanks were of a fashion peculiarly his own:

“Jake Ledbetter, you always was the durndest fool in Junaluska.”

Only one took exception to her gift. That was Aunt Sally Long, the “queer old stick.”

“Now Jakey Ledbetter,” she whined, “I can’t put that caliker to no use in the world. I wove this frock myself mighty nigh five year ago”—she held out her narrow skirt for his inspection—“and I ain’t snagged it yet. I reckon it’s goin’ to last as long’s I do, at any rate I don’t want another frock added unto me. I’d a heap ruther you’d a brung me a pound of snuff.”

“Aunt Sally” (the accommodating Santa Claus took the roll from her and restored it to the tree), “it’s my intention for you to have whatever you can get the most fun out of; I can barter that thar frock for snuff enough to last you all your life, andthere’ll be a balance comin’ to you besides; what’ll you have for that?”

“I don’ know, Jakey,” she drawled, and she pleated the hem of her apron while she pondered, “I don’ know; I reckon you might as well bring me a little more snuff.”

The roads were heavy with mud when Bonaparte and Butterfly toiled down into the little straggling town. “This is a Chrisamus tree,” announced the little Santa Claus, and there was no need to tarry there for delivery, for all the foot-free denizens, young, old, and middle-aged, thronged it when it stopped and followed when it moved on, and the tree shed its fruit as if a gale had struck it.

The old Santa Claus held his whip with a fine show of nonchalance while the little one worked among the holly branches, disdainful of the thorns, his eyes afire, his cheeks red hot, and his aureole ofyellow hair tossing and tumbling with every motion of his little body. Williebelle, her ears tied up with a red woollen stocking and redolent of turpentine, was there and upon her he bestowed three sticks of peppermint, “two for herself and one for her earache.” He waited in person upon Aunt Polly, bedridden for a dozen years, and the procession was brought to a stand before her door that she might look out upon the first Christmas tree she had ever seen.

“I ’low this is a Methdis’ Christmas tree,” cried an Episcopalian (the only cynical one), “you-all aimed to get ahead of us.”

“No, siree,” answered the old man, “this yer tree’s built according to Grover Cleveland’s plan and he don’t b’lieve in secks. We-all ain’t aimin’ to git ahead of anybody but the bears.”

“Merry Christmas,” shouted apeace-making Episcopalian and the crowd took up the greeting, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” till the hills gave back the echo.

The tired oxen drew the dismantled tree out of the village. The tired little Santa Claus cuddled sleepily within the encircling arm of the old one but they left behind them the spirit of the Christmas-tide. In the village “Merry Christmas!” still sounded from house to house and along the streets. The sticky children shouted it to one another; the women from their door-ways told it to passers-by; old men, nodding and smiling as they fumbled with jack-knife and tobacco and young men lounging on the corners, all told it to one another. Red Baptists told it to Yellow Baptists and Presbyterians to Methodists, and some unthinkingly told it to persons they were not on speaking terms with, thenlooked ashamed but repeated it. By and by the shadows came down into the valley, crept to the summits of the eastern ridge, slipped over and the village lay in darkness and in peace.

But high up on the mountain side, in a lonely hut that had not been visited by the Christmas tree, Carolina cuddled her little boy to sleep, crooning softly and sadly:

“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,All seated on the ground.”

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