lieth beneath the tree;
So let Autumn air be never so fair,
It by no means agrees with me.

'But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS Stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!
We'll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart,
And we'll keep him up, while there's bite or sup,
And in fellowship good, we'll part.
'In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard-weather scars;
They're no disgrace, for there's much the same trace
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I sing till the roof doth ring
And it echoes from wall to wall--
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all!'

This song was tumultuously applauded--for friends and dependents make
a capital audience--and the poor relations, especially, were in perfect
ecstasies of rapture. Again was the fire replenished, and again went the
wassail round.

'How it snows!' said one of the men, in a low tone.

'Snows, does it?' said Wardle.

'Rough, cold night, Sir,' replied the man; 'and there's a wind got up,
that drifts it across the fields, in a thick white cloud.'

'What does Jem say?' inquired the old lady. 'There ain't anything the
matter, is there?'

'No, no, mother,' replied Wardle; 'he says there's a snowdrift, and a
wind that's piercing cold. I should know that, by the way it rumbles in
the chimney.'

'Ah!' said the old lady, 'there was just such a wind, and just such
a fall of snow, a good many years back, I recollect--just five years
before your poor father died. It was a Christmas Eve, too; and I
remember that on that very night he told us the story about the goblins
that carried away old Gabriel Grub.'

'The story about what?' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Oh, nothing, nothing,' replied Wardle. 'About an old sexton, that the
good people down here suppose to have been carried away by goblins.'

'Suppose!' ejaculated the old lady. 'Is there anybody hardy enough to
disbelieve it? Suppose! Haven't you heard ever since you were a child,
that he WAS carried away by the goblins, and don't you know he was?'

'Very well, mother, he was, if you like,' said Wardle laughing. 'He WAS
carried away by goblins, Pickwick; and there's an end of the matter.'

'No, no,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'not an end of it, I assure you;