y Father, my Father!"

A deep hush followed the cry. "Listen!" whispered Athenais,
breathlessly.

Was it an echo? It could not be, for it came again--the voice of the
child, clear and low, waking from sleep, and calling: "Father!"

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS-TREE

I

The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.

Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river
Moselle; steep hill-sides blooming with mystic forget-me-not where the
glow of the setting sun cast long shadows down their eastern slope; an
arch of clearest, deepest gentian bending overhead; in the centre of the
aerial garden the walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, steel-blue to the
east, violet to the west; silence over all,--a gentle, eager, conscious
stillness, diffused through the air, as if earth and sky were hushing
themselves to hear the voice of the river faintly murmuring down the
valley.

In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All day long
there had been a strange and joyful stir among the nuns. A breeze of
curiosity and excitement had swept along the corridors and through every
quiet cell. A famous visitor had come to the convent.

It was Winfried of England, whose name in the Roman tongue was Boniface,
and whom men called the Apostle of Germany. A great preacher; a
wonderful scholar; but, more than all, a daring traveller, a venturesome
pilgrim, a priest of romance.

He had left his home and his fair estate in Wessex; he would not stay in
the rich monastery of Nutescelle, even though they had chosen him as
the abbot; he had refused a bishopric at the court of King Karl. Nothing
would content him but to go out into the wild woods and preach to the
heathen.

Through the forests of Hesse and Thuringia, and along the borders
of Saxony, he had wandered for years, with a handful of companions,
sleeping under the trees, crossing mountains and marshes, now here,
now there, never satisfied with ease and comfort, always in love with
hardship and danger.

What a man he was! Fair and slight, but straight as a spear and strong
as an oaken staff. His face was still young; the smooth skin was bronzed
by wind and sun. His gray eyes, clean and kind, flashed like fire when
he spoke of his adventures, and of the evil deeds of the false priests
with whom he contended.

What tales he had told that day! Not of miracles wrought by sacred
relics; not of courts and councils and splendid cathedrals; though he
knew