t
getting a speck of soot on his bulging vestments.

Perhaps he imagined, while mother woke the children and had them peek
through a "crack in the door" at the white whiskered visitor stuffing
their stockings full of presents, that he had tethered his prancing
team of reindeer to a holly tree outside. Certainly there seemed to
have been material for such imagination, for tradition said that the
hill on which the first houses of the first settlement were built had
at one time been richly adorned with a species of American Ilex, and
even now there remained here and there carefully preserved remnants of
that reported original wealth of the wilderness.

Whether or not this conjectural history of the settlement had anything
to do with the cheerful mid-winter holiday developments of the
community need not be argued at length. An argument would render the
truth flat and insipid if it should prove to be in accord with poetic
tradition. So what's the use?

In mid-winter everybody just knew that Hollyhill as a child had been
nursed in the snow trimmed evergreen lap of Christmas. Not that this
municipality had a corner on mid-winter holiday generosity to the
exclusion of all other communities. The chief outstanding fact in this
relation was that the inhabitants, or those so fortunate as to be in a
position to give and receive abundantly, believed Hollyhill to be the
most generous Christmas town on earth, and there was nobody
sufficiently interested to make a denial and follow it up with proof.

Much of the credit for this condition was due to the leading man of
the place, Richard P. Stanlock, president and controlling power of the
Hollyhill Coal Mining company, which owned a string of mines in the
mountain district near the divisional line of two states. Besides
being the leading citizen, Mr. Stanlock was the "biggest" man in town,
because of the position to which he had risen, his ability to hold it,
and the influence that went with it. What he said usually went, but
his hand was not always evident. He liked to see things done,
doubtless enjoyed the realization that his was the great moving power
that produced results, but didn't give a fig to have anybody else know
it. To his intimate friends, who were few, and to the many with whom
he would pass the time of day, he was as common in word and manner as
the average householder with nothing more pretentious in life than
the earning of his daily bread.

But in spite of all thi