then you
must walk more slowly. Greet father and mother and wish them a right
merry Christmas."

Grandmother kissed both children on their cheeks and pushed them through
the door. Nevertheless she herself went along, accompanied them through
the garden, let them out by the back gate, closed it behind them, and
went back into the house.

The children walked past the cakes of ice beside grandfather's mill,
passed through the fields of Millsdorf, and turned upward toward the
meadows.

When they were passing along the heights where, as has been said, stood
scattered trees and clumps of bushes there fell, quite slowly, some few
snow-flakes.

"Do you see, Sanna," said the boy, "I had thought right away that we
would have snow; do you remember, when we left home, how the sun was a
bloody red like the lamp hanging at the Holy Sepulchre; and now nothing
is to be seen of it any more, and only the gray mist is above the
tree-tops. That always means snow."

The children walked on more gladly and Sanna was happy whenever she
caught a falling flake on the dark sleeves of her coat and the flake
stayed there a long time before melting. When they had finally arrived
at the outermost edge of the Millsdorf heights where the road enters the
dark pines of the "neck" the solid front of the forest was already
prettily sprinkled by the flakes falling ever more thickly. They now
entered the dense forest which extended over the longest part of the
journey still ahead of them.

From the edge of the forest the ground continues to rise up to the point
where one reaches the red memorial post, when the road leads downward
toward the valley of Gschaid. In fact, the slope of the forest from the
Millsdorf side is so steep that the road does not gain the height by a
straight line but climbs up in long serpentines from west to east and
from east to west. The whole length of the road up to the post and down
to the meadows of Gschaid leads through tall, dense woods without a
clearing which grow less heavy as one comes down on the level again and
issues from them near the meadows of the valley of Gschaid. Indeed, the
"neck," though being only a small ridge connecting two great mountain
masses, is yet large enough to appear a considerable mountain itself if
it were placed in the plain.

The first observation the children made when entering the woods was that
the frozen ground appeared gray as though powdered with flour, and that
the beards of the d