the scented hay into the
mangers, and listened to the contented snortings and puffings as soft
muzzles tossed the fodder, he thought how happy these creatures were
in their warm security. He thought how happy he was, and his wife,
reunited to him after three years of forced and almost continuous
separation. For him, and for the young wife, now recovering health in
the tonic air of the spruce land after years of invalidism, this had
promised to be a Christmas of unalloyed gladness. To one only, to the
little one whose happiness was his continual thought, the day would be
dark with the shattering of cherished hopes. The more he thought of
it, the more he felt that it was not to be borne. Faint but piteous
memories from his own childhood stirred in his brain, and he realized
how irremediable, how final and desperate, seem a child's small
sorrows. A sudden resolve took hold upon him. This bitterness, at
least, his little one should not know. He jammed the pitchfork
energetically back into the mow and left the barn with the quick step
of an assured purpose.

Three years before this, Dave Patton, after a series of misfortunes in
the Settlement, which had reduced him to sharp poverty, had been
forced to leave his wife and three-years-old baby with her own people,
while he betook himself into the remotest wilderness to carve out a
new home for them on a tract of forest land which was all that
remained of his possessions. The land was fertile and carried good
timber, and he had begun to prosper. But his wife's ill-health had
long made it impossible for her to face the hardships and risks of a
pioneer's life two days' journey from the nearest civilization. Not
till the preceding spring had Dave dared to bring his family out to
the wilderness home that he had so long been making ready for them.
Then, however, it had proved a success. In that high and healing air
he had seen the colour slowly come back to his wife's pale cheeks; and
as for the child, until the great snows came and cut her off from this
novel and interesting world, she had been absorbingly happy in the
fellowship of the wilderness.

When Dave re-entered the cabin, he found the table set over by the
window, and his wife beating up the batter for the buckwheat pancakes
that she was about to griddle for breakfast. Lidey, still in her
little blue flannel nightgown, but with beaded deerskin moccasins on
her tiny feet, and the golden wilfulness of her hair tied back
d