ceremony
helped themselves liberally to the steaming food. For a few moments they
seemed oblivious to everything but the demands of hunger. The potatoes
and biscuits disappeared with surprising rapidity, washed down by large
drafts of coffee. These men, labouring steadily through the short
daylight hours in the dry, cold air of the Dakota winter, were like
engines whose fires had burned low--they were taking fuel. Presently,
the first keen edge of appetite satisfied, they ate more slowly, and
Nels, straightening up with a sigh, spoke:

"Ay seen Seigert in town ta-day. Ha vants von hundred fifty fer dose
team."

"Come down, eh?" commented Charlie. "Well, they're worth that. We'd
better take 'em, Nels. We'll need 'em in the spring if we break the
north forty."

"Yas, et's a nice team," agreed Nels. "Ha vas driven ham ta-day."

"Is he haulin' corn?"

"Na; he had his kids oop gettin' Christmas bresents."

"Chris--By gracious! to-morrow's Christmas!"

Nels nodded solemnly, as one possessing superior knowledge. Charlie
became thoughtful.

"We'll come in sort of slim on it here, I reckon, Nels. Christmas ain't
right, somehow, out here. Back in Wisconsin, where I came from, there's
where you get your Christmas!" Charlie spoke with the unswerving
prejudice of mankind for the land of his birth.

"Yas, dose been right. En da ol' kontry dey havin' gret times
Christmas."

Their thoughts were all bent now upon the holiday scenes of the past. As
they finished the meal and cleared away and washed the dishes they
related incidents of their boyhood's time, compared, reiterated, and
embellished. As they talked they grew jovial, and laughed often.

"The skee broke an' you went over kerplunk, hey? Haw, haw! That reminds
me of one time in Wisconsin----"

Something of the joyous spirit of the Christmastide seemed to have
entered into this little farmhouse set in the midst of the lonely, white
fields. In the hearts of these men, moving about in their dim-lighted
room, was reechoed the joyous murmur of the great world without: the
gayety of the throngs in city streets, where the brilliant shop-windows,
rich with holiday spoils, smile out upon the passing crowd, and the
clang of street-cars and roar of traffic mingle with the cries of
street-venders. The work finished, they drew their chairs to the stove,
and filled their pipes, still talking.

"Well, well," said Charlie, after the laugh occasioned by one of Nels'
droll storie