s!"

The child sat up straight in her bunk, her eyes grew very wide and
filled with tears, and her lips quivered. This was the first really
effective blow that her faith in Christmas and in Santa Claus had ever
received. But instantly her faith recovered itself. The eager light
returned to her face, and she shook her yellow head obstinately.

"He won't _have to_ 'lect the children in the Settlements, will he,
popsie?" she cried. And without waiting for an answer, she went on:
"He kin be everywheres to oncet, Sandy Claus can. He's so good an'
kind, he won't forget _one_ of the little boys an' girls in the
Settlements, nor me, out here in the woods. Oh, mumsie, I wisht it was
to-night was Christmas Eve!" And in her happy anticipation she bounced
up and down in the bunk, a figure of fairy joy in her blue flannel
nightgown.

Dave turned away with a heavy heart and jammed more wood into the
stove. Then, pulling on his thick cowhide "larrigans," coat and
woollen mittens, he went out to fodder the cattle. With that joyous
roar of fresh flame in the stove the cabin was already warming up, but
outside the door, which Dave closed quickly behind him, the cold had a
kind of still savagery, edged and instant like a knife. To a strong
man, however, it was a tonic, an honest challenging to resistance. In
spite of his sad preoccupation, Dave responded to the cold air
instinctively, pausing outside the door to fill his deep lungs and to
glance at the thrilling mystery of the sunrise before him.

The cabin stood at the top of the clearing against a background of
dense spruce forest which sheltered it on the north and north-east.
Across the yard, on the western side of the cabin, the log barn and
the "lean-to" thrust up their laden roofs from the surrounding snow.
In front, the cleared ground sloped away gently to the woods below, a
snow-swathed, mystically glimmering expanse, its surface tumbled by
the upthrust of the muffled stumps. From the eastern corner of the
clearing, directly opposite the doorway before which Dave was
standing, the Settlements trail led straight away, a lane of
miraculous glory, into the very focus of the sunrise.

For miles upon miles the slow slope of the wilderness was towards the
east, so that the trail was like an open gate into the great space of
earth and sky. The sky, from the eastern horizon to the zenith--and
that was all that Dave Patton had eyes for--was filled with a
celestial rabble of rose-pin