home now for the
Christmas vacation.

The day after his return dawned bright and cold--one of those beautiful
winter days occasionally seen in the Storm Country. Heavy snows had
already fallen and made certain a white Christmas. Andy was helping
Tessibel in order that she might have time to complete her Yuletide
preparations. She'd filled her son's heart with delightful anticipations
of the holiday, now but a few days distant, and he was eagerly looking
forward to the Santa Claus who came to visit good little boys and fill
their stockings with goodies.

At the north of the house Deforrest had made a little snow-hill for Boy.
Many a happy hour the little fellow spent upon it with his sled. Oftimes
his mother joined him in the sport, and the joyous laughter of the two
children of nature rose high and clear in the winter air.

The morning's work finished, Tessibel wrapped up Boy and sent him out to
play. She stood for some moments on the porch watching the sturdy little
figure arrange the sled at the top of the hill.

How she loved him, and how good he was! Never since the day of his birth
had he given her one sorrowful moment. She turned her eyes from Boy to
the lake, and allowed them to rest upon the shanty near the shore. A
disturbing thought pressed into her mind. They would not be long there
now.

Deforrest had told her that his lease of the house expired the first of
January, and Waldstricker had refused to renew it. If they moved away,
she'd be lonely for the sight of her old friends and all the dear,
familiar things that had met her eyes every day since she could
remember.

She hoped her new home might be in the Storm Country. She loved the lake
in its every mood. Dark and sullen, visitors had called it. But she'd
seen it on summer days, a band of burnished blue cementing the harmonies
of greens and browns into a picture of perfect beauty. She knew its
deep, brooding peace when the light was fading and the evening breeze
gently ruffled its surface. She'd skated over its shining bosom in the
blinding glare of the unclouded sun and in the soft radiance of the
shadow-filled moonlight. She knew the soft spots in the ice caused by
flowing springs in the lake-bottom and had drunk their pure, cold water.
Her lifelong intimacy had wooed from rockbound lake its inmost secrets.
Today the water lay a gleaming jewel, huge by contrast to the myriad
sparkles the sunbeams pricked out of the snow. She looked across to East