omething to somebody.

"Shall I put out the candles, mother?" whispered Robert.

"What will they do to us for having the tree? I wish we hadn't it,"
regretted Rupert; while Lucy clung to her mother's gown and shrieked
with all her strength, "It's Indians!"

Pale and white and still, ready to meet her fate, stood Mrs. Olcott,
until, out of the knocking and the tapping at her door, her heart caught
a sound. It was a voice calling, "Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!"

"Unbar the door!" she cried back to her boys; "it's your father
calling!" Down came the blankets; up went the curtain; open flew the
door, and in walked Captain Olcott, followed by every man and woman in
Plymouth who had heard at break of day the glorious news that the
expected ship had arrived at Boston, and with it the long lost Captain
Olcott. For an instant nothing was thought of except the joyous
welcoming of the Captain in his new home.

"What's this? What is it? What does this mean?" was asked again and
again, when the first excitement was passed, as the tall young pine
stood aloft, its candles ablaze, its gifts still hanging.

"It's welcome home to father!" said Lucy, her only thought to screen her
mother.

"No, child, no!" sternly spoke Mrs. Olcott. "Tell the truth!"

"It's--a--Christmas-tree!" faltered poor Lucy.

One and another and another, Pilgrims and Puritans all, drew near with
faces stern and forbidding, and gazed and gazed, until one and another
and yet another softened slowly into a smile as little Roger's piping
voice sung out:

"She made it for me, mother did. But you may have it now, and all the
pretty things that are on it, too, because you've brought my father back
again; if mother will let you," he added.

Neither Pilgrim nor Puritan frowned at the gift. One man, the sternest
there, broke off a little twig and said:

"I'll take it for the sake of the good old times at home."

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS IN NEW ENGLAND.

BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.

They thought they had come to their port that day,
But not yet was their journey done;
And they drifted away from Provincetown Bay
In the fireless light of the sun.
With rain and sleet were the tall masts iced,
And gloomy and chill was the air,
But they looked from the crystal sails to Christ,
And they came to a harbor fair.
The white hills silent lay,--
For there were no ancient bells to ring,
No