ened his eyes and stretched
his head up, saying just as plain as a bird could say, "Now, my new
friends, I want you to give me something more to eat." Gretchen gladly
fed him again, and then, holding him in her lap, she softly and gently
stroked his gray feathers until the little creature seemed to lose all
fear of her. That evening Granny taught her a Christmas hymn and told
her another beautiful Christmas story. Then Gretchen made up a funny
little story to tell to the birdie. He winked his eyes and turned his
head from side to side in such a droll fashion that Gretchen laughed
until the tears came.

As Granny and she got ready for bed that night, Gretchen put her arms
softly around Granny's neck, and whispered: "What a beautiful Christmas
we have had to-day, Granny! Is there anything in the world more lovely
than Christmas?"

"Nay, child, nay," said Granny, "not to such loving hearts as yours."

XXXV. CHRISTMAS ON BIG RATTLE*

* This story was first printed in the Youth's Companion, Dec. 14, 1905.

THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

Archer sat by the rude hearth of his Big Rattle camp, brooding in a sort
of tired contentment over the spitting fagots of var and glowing coals
of birch.

It was Christmas Eve. He had been out on his snowshoes all that day, and
all the day before, springing his traps along the streams and putting
his deadfalls out of commission--rather queer work for a trapper to be
about.

But Archer, despite all his gloomy manner, was really a sentimentalist,
who practised what he felt.

"Christmas is a season of peace on earth," he had told himself, while
demolishing the logs of a sinister deadfall with his axe; and now the
remembrance of his quixotic deed added a brightness to the fire and to
the rough, undecorated walls of the camp.

Outside, the wind ran high in the forest, breaking and sweeping tidelike
over the reefs of treetops. The air was bitterly cold. Another voice,
almost as fitful as the sough of the wind, sounded across the night. It
was the waters of Stone Arrow Falls, above Big Rattle.

The frosts had drawn their bonds of ice and blankets of silencing snow
over all the rest of the stream, but the white and black face of the
falls still flashed from a window in the great house of crystal, and
threw out a voice of desolation.

Sacobie Bear, a full-blooded Micmac, uttered a grunt of relief when his
ears caught the bellow of Stone Arrow Falls. He stood still, and turned
his he