t of the line where the
soldiers of either army marched or camped.

The year had been very full of sorrow and care and trouble and hard
work; but when the time for Christmas drew near, this grand old Mrs.
Livingston said it should be the happiest Christmas that the old house
had ever known. She would make the children happy once, whatever might
come afterward, and so she set about it quite early in the fall. One
day the children (there were more than a dozen of them in the house at
the time) found out that the great room at the end of the hall was
locked. They asked Mrs. Livingston many times when it meant, and at
last she told them that one night after they were in bed and asleep,
Santa Claus appeared at her door and asked if he might occupy that
room until the night before Christmas. She told him he might, and he
had locked the door himself, and said "if any child so much as looked
through a crack in the door that child would find nothing but chestnut
burs in his stocking." Well, the children knew that Santa Claus meant
what he said, always, so they used to run past the door every day as
fast as they could go and keep their eyes the other way, lest
something should be seen that ought not to. Before the day came every
wide chimney in the house was swept bright and clean for Santa Claus.

Aunt Elise, a sweet young lady, lived here then. She was old Mrs.
Livingston's daughter, and she told the children that she had seen
Santa Claus with her own eyes when he locked the door, and he said
that every room must be made as fine as fine could be.

After that Tom and Richard and Will and Philip worked away as hard as
they could. They gathered bushels and bushels of ivy, and a mile or
two of ground-pine, and eight or ten pecks of bitter-sweet, and stored
them all in the corn granary, and waited for the day. Then, when Aunt
Elise set to work to adorn the house, she had twenty-four willing
hands to help, beside her own two.

When all was made ready, and it was getting near to night in the
afternoon before Christmas, Mrs. Livingston sent a messenger for
three men from the farm. When they were come, she called in three
African servants, and she said to the six men, "Saddle horses and ride
away, each one of you in a different direction, and go to every house
within five miles of here, and ask: 'Are any children in this
habitation?' Then say that you are sent to fetch the children's
stockings, that Santa Claus wants them, and take