the right he climbed, not up the bed of the
stream, but to the top of a little spur, along which he went slowly and
noiselessly, stooping low. A little farther on he dropped on his knees
and crawled to the edge of a cliff, where he lay flat on his belly and
peeked over. Below him one Jeb Mullins, a stooping, gray old man, was
stirring something in a great brass kettle. A tin cup was going the
round of three men squatting near. On a log two men were playing with
greasy cards, and near them another lay in drunken sleep. The boy
grinned, slid down through the bushes, and, deepening his voice all
he could, shouted:

"Throw up yo' hands!"

The old man flattened behind the big kettle with his pistol out. One
of the four men leaped for a tree--the others shot up their hands. The
card-players rolled over the bank near them, with no thought of where
they would land, and the drunken man slept on. The boy laughed loudly.

"Don't shoot!" he cried, and he came through the bushes jeering. The men
at the still dropped their hands and looked sheepish and then angry, as
did the card-players, whose faces reappeared over the edge of the bank.
But the old man and the young one behind the tree, who alone had got
ready to fight, joined in with the boy, and the others had to look
sheepish again.

"Come on, Chris!" said the old moonshiner, dipping the cup into the
white liquor and handing it forth full, "Hit's on me."

Christmas is "new Christmas" in Happy Valley. The women give scant heed
to it, and to the men it means "a jug of liquor, a pistol in each hand,
and a galloping nag." There had been target-shooting at Uncle Jerry's
mill to see who should drink old Jeb Mullins's moonshine and who should
smell, and so good was the marksmanship that nobody went without his
dram. The carousing, dancing, and fighting were about all over, and now,
twelve days later, it was the dawn of "old Christmas," and St. Hilda sat
on the porch of her Mission school alone. The old folks of Happy Valley
pay puritan heed to "old Christmas." They eat cold food and preserve a
solemn demeanor on that day, and they have the pretty legend that at
midnight the elders bloom and the beasts of the field and the cattle
in the barn kneel, lowing and moaning. The sun was just rising and the
day was mild, for a curious warm spell, not uncommon in the hills, had
come to Happy Valley. Already singing little workers were "toting rocks"
from St. Hilda's garden, corn-field, an