darkest
part was a thick mountain wall, and in the wall there was an old door
made of rough boards. The village children, gathering cones in the
Forest, had peeped through this door when Christopher had left it open
a crack.

"Christopher's home is nothing but a cave with stones for the floor!"
the children whispered.

"Beggar Mother stirs a pot that hangs over a fire of logs!" they
said.

"Christopher and his little brothers and sisters wear skins for
clothing. They sleep, like wolves, on beds of pine and moss!" they
said, too, and then they ran away when they saw Christopher coming
out.

He was as roughly dressed as one of the baby bears whom he knew in the
Goeinge Forest and for whom he gathered wild honey; or as shy as one of
the little red foxes that had no home save a hollow tree. All his life
he had been hungry, and starved, and scorned. But Christopher was
known by all of the Forest as loving and gentle and unselfish.

Beggar Mother neither baked nor brewed, but when she went her way down
to the village from door to door with all her little ones clinging to
her skirts, the villagers would sometimes give her six brown loaves,
one for each of her children.

Then Christopher would creep out of the cave and break his bread to
give some crumbs to the starlings, the finches, and the baby
squirrels. He knew where the wild strawberries grew, and he gathered
them for his mother. He pulled grass and leaves for the wild hares. He
had once lifted Mother Fox from her trap and sent her back to her
babies. He brought spring water from the rocks for the flowers, and
never frightened the owls or caught the butterflies.

But the Goeinge Forest was cold and asleep now, for it was Christmas
time.

Christopher knew that it was now Christmas Eve for he had been to the
village and looked in the doors. Lighted candles were being set in the
windows. Great pieces of bread and meat were being placed on the
tables, and bunches of grain thick with seeds were hung in the gardens
to be a Christmas feast for the birds.

But when the villagers saw Christopher from the cave in the Forest
looking in their doors, they slammed them shut, for they knew him only
as the child of Beggar Mother. They had no room for him on Christmas
Eve.

So Christopher walked alone and he came, through the snow, to the
little church on the edge of the Goeinge Forest. Brother Anselmo tended
the church. He had arranged the little _creche_, which was like t