rain, an' maybe ole Mister Log try to slip away like a thief
in de dark. Don't git away from Bob; no suh. You be heah now Christmas
eve--sho'!"

"Gord!" said a little negro with bandy legs. "Soak dat log till
Christmas an' I reckon he'll burn mo'n two weeks."

God was good that Christmas--good to the nation, for He brought to it
victory and peace, and made it one and indivisible in feeling, as it
already was in fact; good to the State, for it had sprung loyally to the
defence of the country, and had won all the honour that was in the
effort to be won, and man nor soldier can do more; good to the mother,
for the whole land rang with praises of her sons, and her own people
swore that to one should be given once more the seat of his fathers in
the capitol; but best to her when the bishop came to ordain, and, on
his knees at the chancel and waiting for the good old man's hands, was
the best beloved of her children and her first-born--Clay Crittenden. To
her a divine purpose seemed apparent, to bring her back the best of the
old past and all she prayed for the future.

As Christmas day drew near, gray clouds marshalled and loosed white
messengers of peace and good-will to the frozen earth until the land was
robed in a thick, soft, shining mantle of pure white--the first
spiritualization of the earth for the birth of spring. It was the
mother's wish that her two sons should marry on the same day and on that
day, and Judith and Phyllis yielded. So early that afternoon, she saw
together Judith, as pure and radiant as a snow-hung willow in the
sunshine, and her son, with the light in his face for which she had
prayed so many years--saw them standing together and clasp hands
forever. They took a short wedding trip, and that straight across the
crystal fields, where little Phyllis stood with Basil in
uniform--straight and tall and with new lines, too, but deepened merely,
about his handsome mouth and chin--waiting to have their lives made one.
And, meanwhile, Bob and Molly too were making ready; for if there be a
better hot-bed of sentiment than the mood of man and woman when the man
is going to war it is the mood of man and woman when the man has come
home from war; and with cries and grunts and great laughter and singing,
the negroes were pulling the yule-log from its long bath and across the
snowy fields; and when, at dusk, the mother brought her two sons and her
two daughters and the Pages and Stantons to her own roof, the b