ls, set it carefully on the
snow, and scattered crumbs of corn-bread to attract the birds.

In half an hour he went up again, and found to his delight he had caught
bigger game--a poor rabbit which had come from no one knows where over
the crust to find food.

This gave Willie a new idea; they could save their Christmas dinner
after all; rabbits made very nice pies.

Poor Bunny was quietly laid to rest, and the trap set again. This time
another rabbit was caught, perhaps the mate of the first. This was the
last of the rabbits, but the next catch was a couple of snowbirds. These
Willie carefully placed in a corner of the attic, using the trap for a
cage, and giving them plenty of food and water.

When the girls were fast asleep, with tears on their cheeks for the
dreadful Christmas they were going to have, Willie told mamma about his
plans. Mamma was pale and weak with anxiety, and his news first made her
laugh and then cry. But after a few moments given to her long pent-up
tears, she felt much better and entered into his plans heartily.

The two captives up in the attic were to be Christmas presents to the
girls, and the rabbits were to make the long anticipated pie. As for
plum-pudding, of course that couldn't be thought of.

"But don't you think, mamma," said Willie eagerly, "that you could make
some sort of a cake out of meal, and wouldn't hickory nuts be good in
it? You know I have some left up in the attic, and I might crack them
softly up there, and don't you think they would be good?" he concluded
anxiously.

"Well, perhaps so," said mamma, anxious to please him and help him in
his generous plans. "I can try. If I only had some eggs--but seems to me
I have heard that snow beaten into cake would make it light--and there's
snow enough, I'm sure," she added with a faint smile, the first Willie
had seen for three days.

The smile alone he felt to be a great achievement, and he crept
carefully up the ladder, cracked the nuts to the last one, brought them
down, and mamma picked the meats out, while he dressed the two rabbits
which had come so opportunely to be their Christmas dinner. "Wish you
Merry Christmas!" he called out to Nora and Tot when they waked. "See
what Santa Claus has brought you!"

Before they had time to remember what a sorry Christmas it was to be,
they received their presents, a live bird, for each, a bird that was
never to be kept in a cage, but fly about the house till summer came,
and t