st," said Cookee, leading the ladies into a
lean-to shed that he had built up against the cabin, to store his cooked
foods safely away from men and children.

In the spare minutes between meals when he had to cook and serve food
for more than fifty hungry men, Cookee had delighted in baking cookies
of every conceivable shape. These were for the children.

From the ankle bones and hoofs of the deer he had boiled out the jelly
and flavored it with lemon and nutmeg and made a mould of jelly that
looked exactly like calf's-foot jelly, but tasted much better. It shook
upon its platter like the showpiece in any caterer's window.

He had cored large apples, and, with a concoction of beaten eggs,
molasses, nuts and a bit of mint to flavor it, filled the gaps and baked
them. The apples were soft and shiny when they came forth from the oven,
and immediately, Cookee poured some melted sugar over them and allowed
them to crystallize in the cold.

Several other unique side dishes had been made by the ingenious cook,
and the ladies were most generous in their praise.

For several nights preceding Christmas Eve, the children had been sent
to bed as soon as supper was over, to give the elders plenty of time to
string pop-corn, make paper trimmings, and arrange generally for the
great tree they were to have in the clearing if the day was fair, or in
the dining-room if it stormed.

Christmas Eve was very clear and not too cold to be enjoyable out of
doors. So, the men planted the tree in the middle of the clearing in the
morning, and the children wandered about it all that day, trying to
figure out how it ever would get trimmed.

"Tause," said Babs to Dot, "Dere ain't any chimbley fer Santy to come
down!"

"But, we are almos' up in his home an' mebbe he don't use chimbleys at
the North Pole," ventured Dot, who was somewhat suspicious of fat old
Santa ever creeping down their chimneys at Oakwood.

That afternoon, Mike was told that the driver of one of the sledges
would be free to take the children on a sleigh-ride party to the place
where he knew the holly and mistletoe grew. The children were eager to
go, and soon were out of the way.

The moment the coast was clear the elders hurried out of the cabins with
huge bundles of trimmings for the tree and started to dress it up in all
manner of finery. Long chains of white and colored pop-corn, fancy cut
and fluted tissue-paper chains, paper flowers, rosy apples, numerous
paper bu