ery one in a family, as they stood
there in Dame Louisa's yard. People always tied on those, after they
had bought them, and had set them up in their own parlors. But these
trees bore regular fruit like apple, or peach, or plum-trees, only
there was a considerable variety in it. These trees when in full
fruitage were festooned with strings of pop-corn, and weighed down
with apples and oranges and figs and bags of candy, and it was really
an amazing sight to see them out there in Dame Louisa's front yard.
But now they were all yellow and dead, and not so much as one pop-corn
whitened the upper branches, neither was there one candle shining
out in the night. For the trees in their prime had borne also little
twinkling lights like wax candles.

Dame Louisa looked out at her dead Christmas-trees, and scowled. She
could see the children out in the road, and they were trudging along
in the direction of the White Woods. "Let 'em go," she snapped to
herself. "I guess they won't go far. I'll be rid of their noise, any
way."

She could hear poor Dame Penny's distressed voice out in her yard,
calling "Biddy, Biddy, Biddy;" and she scowled more fiercely than
ever. "I'm glad she's lost her old silver hen," she muttered to
herself. She had always suspected the silver hen of pecking at the
roots of the Christmas-trees and so causing them to blast; then, too,
the silver hen had used to stand on the fence and crow; for, unlike
other hens, she could crow very beautifully, and that had disturbed
her.

Dame Louisa had a very wise book, which she had consulted to find the
reason for the death of her Christmas-trees, but all she could find in
it was one short item, which did not satisfy her at all. The book was
on the plan of an encyclopedia, and she, having turned to the "ch's,"
found:

"Christmas-trees--very delicate when transplanted, especially
sensitive, and liable to blast at any change in the moral
atmosphere. Remedy: discover and confess the cause."

After reading this, Dame Louisa was always positive that Dame Penny's
silver hen was at the root of the mischief, for she knew that she
herself had never done anything to hurt the trees.

Dame Penny was so occupied in calling "Biddy, Biddy, Biddy," and
shaking a little pan of corn, that she never noticed the children
taking the road toward the White Woods. If she had done so she would
have stopped them, for the White Woods was considered a very dangerous
place. It wa