ious
sticks and twists of molasses candy; dainty drop cakes and
kisses smuggled into the oven on baking-day,--all were secreted
in the wonderful chest in the attic.

At last came the day before Christmas, and Lottie took the axe and
went into the woods, for this woods-girl could not only bake cakes,
dress dolls, and saw broomsticks, but she could even chop down a tree,
if it was small.

She found a beautiful spruce tree, which had evidently been growing
all these years on purpose for a Christmas tree, so straight it stood,
and so wide and strong were its branches.

Cutting it down, and dragging it home over the snow, Lottie presented
herself at the kitchen door, to the astonished eyes of Nancy.

"Now, Nancy, don't you say a word to May. I'm going to surprise her."

"'Deed 'n I should think you'd surprise her, could she see you
dragging that big log into the house!"

"Well, you help me in with it, for I don't want to break its
branches."

"All on my clean floor!" cried Nancy, in dismay.

"Yes, quick!" said Lottie; "it won't muss, you'll see."

Nancy helped her, and the tree yielded to fate and four strong arms,
and went in.

It did look big, and when Lottie stood it up in a tub, it nearly
touched the wall. Around the trunk of the tree, to steady it, she
packed sticks of wood till it stood firm. Then she covered the whole,
tub, wood, and floor around, with great sheets of green moss, which
she had pulled out from under the snow the day before.

She got the tree in early in the morning, and every moment she could
steal from May through the day she spent in filling it, hanging on her
treasures, fastening her candles by sticking large pins up through the
small branches, and standing the candles on them.

The chessboard stood prominently on the moss at the foot of the tree,
and the frame, with its picture, hung from one branch.

When her father came home, he found supper served, as a Christmas eve
treat, Lottie said, in May's room, and adroitly he was kept out of the
mysterious room.

When he was finishing his last cup of tea, and was talking with May,
Lottie slipped out, lighted a long taper, and in five minutes had the
tree all ablaze with light.

"Father," she said, quietly opening the door, "will you bring May out
to her Christmas eve?"

"What!" said father.

But mechanically he took in his arms the light form of his daughter,
and followed Lottie. At the door he stood transfixed, and May could
not