The Project Gutenberg EBook of When the Yule Log Burns, by Leona Dalrymple

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Title: When the Yule Log Burns
A Christmas Story

Author: Leona Dalrymple

Release Date: January 13, 2006 [EBook #17510]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "The Doctor's old-fashioned house loomed gray-white
through the snow-fringed branches of the trees."]

When the Yule Log Burns
A Christmas Story

By Leona Dalrymple
Author of "Uncle Noah's Christmas Party," etc.

New York Robert M. McBride & Company 1916

Copyright, 1916, by Robert M. McBride & Co.

Published November, 1916

CONTENTS

PART I

IN WHICH WE LIGHT A YULE-LOG

CHAPTER

I Kindlings

II Wishing Sparks

III By the Fire

IV Embers

PART II

IN WHICH WE LIGHT THE NEW LOG WITH THE EMBERS OF THE OLD

I The Fire Again

II It Blazes Higher

III The Log at Dawn

IV The Log at Twilight

Part One

In Which We Light a Yule Log

When the Yule Log Burns

I

Kindlings

Polly, the Doctor's old white mare, plodded slowly along the snowy
country road by the picket fence, and turned in at the snow-capped
posts. Ahead, roofed with the ragged ermine of a newly-fallen snow, the
Doctor's old-fashioned house loomed gray-white through the snow-fringed
branches of the trees, a quaint iron lantern, which was picturesque by
day and luminous and cheerful by night, hanging within the square,
white-pillared portico at the side. That the many-paned, old-fashioned
window on the right framed the snow-white head of Aunt Ellen Leslie, the
Doctor's wife, the old Doctor himself was comfortably aware--for his
kindly eyes missed nothing.

He could have told you with a reflective stroke of his grizzled beard
that the snow had stopped but an hour since, and that now through the
white and heavy lacery of branches to the west glowed the flame-gold of
a winter sunset, glinting ruddily over the box-bordered brick walk, the
orchard and the comforta