and trees had shot the tree to pieces. That was ten years
before, but even now, though there were some old men and a few old
women who knew the Bible from end to end, many grown people and most
of the children had never heard of the Book, or of Christ, or knew
that there was a day known as Christmas Day. That such things were
so had hurt the doctor to the heart, and that was why, as Christmas
drew near, he had gone through the out-of-the-way hollows at the Head
of Pigeon and got the names and ages of all the mountain children; why
now, long after that silly quarrel with the marquise, he had humbled his
pride and written her please to come and help him; why she had left the
Christmas of Happy Valley in St. Hilda's hands and was coming; and why
now the cedar-tree stood in the little log schoolhouse at the forks of
Pigeon. Moreover, there was yet enmity between the mountaineers of Pigeon
and the mountaineers over Pine Mountain, who were jealous and scornful
of any signs of the foreign influence but recently come into the hills.
The meeting-house, courthouse, and the schoolhouse were yet favorite
places for fights among the mountaineers. There was yet no reverence
at all for Christmas, and the same vandals might yet regard a Christmas
tree as an imported frivolity to be sternly rebuked. The news was not
only not incredible, it probably was true; and with this conclusion some
very unpleasant lines came into the young doctor's kindly face, and he
sprang for his horse.

Two hours later he had a burly mountaineer with a Winchester posted on the
road leading over Pine Mountain, another on the mountainside overlooking
the little valley, several more similarly armed below, while he and two
friends, with revolvers buckled on, waited for the marquise, with their
horses hitched in front of his office-door. This Christmas tree was to be.

Meanwhile his mind was busy with memories of the previous summer. Once
again he was bounding across a brook in a little ravine in Happy Valley
to see two young mountaineers in a fierce fight--with his sweetheart and
a one-legged man named Pleasant Trouble as referees, and once again that
distracted sweetheart was rushing for refuge to his arms. She had got the
two youths to fight with fists instead of pistols and according to such
rules of the ring as she could remember, and that was why thereafter he
had called her the marquise. Then had come that silly quarrel and, instead
of to the altar, she had