om miles around, dressed in our
best, sat waiting, the sole blot on my happiness being that just as the
curtain was drawn back, revealing the splendid "spruce-pine" (hemlock)
with its gleaming candles, strings of popcorn and hollyberries, and
mysterious packages tied and banked around, my Philip, having
successfully eluded me beforehand, stepped out on the platform, with a
dirty face, tousled hair, soiled shirt, gallusses fastened by one nail,
and a large hole in the seat of his breeches, to hand the gifts to Santa
Claus for distribution.

Then, before daylight this morning, came the boys' carols, sung through
halls and stairways of the big house, and down through the village
street, awakening the valley with the glad tidings; and, finally, the
great moment after breakfast, when our resident children were turned
into the library, where, on a "fireboard" extended for the occasion
across two sides of the room, hung seventy gay stockings. Great was the
joy of little and big girls, many of whom had never beheld a doll
before, over the pretty "poppets" in the tops of their stockings; great,
though quieter, the pleasure of the boys in "store" marbles, balls and
knives, not to mention candy and "orange-apples"; but greatest was the
happiness of little Iry, the "pure scholar," as, after gazing long and
wonderingly at the large picture beneath his stocking, he at last
clasped it rapturously to his heart, crying, "Me'n my maw! I got my maw
back ag'in!" I knew he would recognize it!

My own stocking, too, held its treasures,--ten sticks of candy from
Nucky, a little poke of brown-sugar and crackers (greatest luxury known
to mountain children) from Killis, a walnut penholder from Philip, a
fine apple, all the way from Rakeshin, and treasured for weeks for the
purpose, from Iry, a red-flannel pincushion from Jason.

Then came the painful moment when I saw my boys scatter to their
homes,--even Jason, who has no home, went for a week with Keats and Hen.
Again I begged Killis not to get the boys drunk when they visit him
Saturday, but he would make no promise. Last of all, and most
reluctantly, I bade Nucky goodbye. I fear and dread the events that this
Christmas season may bring to pass on Trigger,--with one accord, the
boys prophesy "bloody doings" there. I would keep him back if I could;
but nothing can prevent his going.

And now I shall have a much needed rest, and a chance to catch up on
magazines and books laid away for five