Part 19

Something of the joyous spirit of the Christmastide seemed to have entered into this little farmhouse set in the midst of the lonely, white fields. In the hearts of these men, moving about in their dim-lighted room, was reëchoed the joyous murmur of the great world without: the gayety of the throngs in city streets, where the brilliant shop-windows, rich with holiday spoils, smile out upon the passing crowd, and the clang of street-cars and roar of traffic mingle with the cries of street-venders. The work finished, they drew their chairs to the stove, and filled their pipes, still talking.

"Well, well," said Charlie, after the laugh occasioned by one of Nels' droll stories had subsided. "It's nice to think of those old times. I'd hate to have been one of these kids that can't have any fun, Christmas or any other time."

"Ay gass dere ain't anybody much dot don'd have someding dis tams a year."

"Oh, yes, there are, Nels! You bet there are!" Charlie nodded at his partner with serious conviction. "Now, there's the Roneys," he waved his pipe over his shoulder. "The old man told me to-night when I was up after the cows that he's sold all the crops except what they need for feedin'--wheat, and corn, and everything, and some hogs besides--and ain't got hardly enough now for feed and clothes for all that family. The rent and the lumber he had to buy to build the new barn after the old one burnt ate up the money like fury. He kind of laughed, and said he guessed the children wouldn't get much Christmas this year. I didn't think about it's being so close when he told me."

"No Christmas!" Nels' round eyes widened with astonishment. "Ay tank dose been pooty bad!" He studied the subject for a few moments, his stolid face suddenly grown thoughtful. Charlie stared at the stove. Far away by the river a lonely coyote set up his quick, howling yelp.

"Dere's been seven kids oop dere," said Nels at last, glancing up as if for corroboration.

"Yes, seven," agreed Charlie.

"Say, do ve need Seigert's team very pad?"

"Well, now that depends," said Charlie. "Why not?"

"Nothin', only Ay vas tankin' ve might tak' some a das veat we vas goin' to sell and--and----"

"Yep, what?"

"And dumb it on Roney's granary floor to-night after dere been asleeb."

Charlie stared at his companion for a moment in silence. Then he rose, and, approaching Nels, examined his partner's face with solemn scrutiny.

"By the great horn spoon," he announced, finally, "you've got a head on you like a balloon, my boy! Keep on gettin' ideas like that, and you'll land in Congress or the poor-farm before many years!"

Then, abandoning his pretense of gravity, he slapped the other on the back.

"Why didn't I think of that? It's the best yet. Seigert's team? Oh, hang Seigert's team. We don't need it. We'll have a little merry Christmas out of this yet. Only they mustn't know where it came from. I'll write a note and stick it under the door, 'You'll find some merry wheat----' No, that ain't it. 'You'll find some wheat in the granary to give the kids a merry Christmas with,' signed, 'Santa Claus.'"

He wrote out the message in the air with a pointing forefinger. He had entered into the spirit of the thing eagerly.

"It's half-past nine now," he went on, looking at the clock. "It'll be eleven time we get the stuff loaded and hauled up there. Let's go out and get at it. Lucky the bobs are on the wagon; they don't make such a racket as wheels."

He took the lantern from its nail behind the door and lighted it, after which he put on his boots, cap, and mittens, and flung his overcoat across his shoulders. Nels, meanwhile, had put on his outer garments, also.

"Shut up the stove, Nels." Charlie blew out the light and opened the door. "There, hang it!" he exclaimed, turning back. "I forgot the note. Ought to be in ink, I suppose. Well, never mind now; we won't put on any style about it."

He took down a pencil from the shelf, and, extracting a bit of wrapping paper from a bundle behind the wood-box, wrote the note by the light of the lantern.

"There, I guess that will do," he said, finally. "Come on!"

Outside, the night air was cold and bracing, and in the black vault of the sky the winter constellations flashed and throbbed. The shadows of the two men, thrown by the lantern, bobbed huge and grotesque across the snow and among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, as they moved toward the barn.

"Ay tank ve put on dose extra side poards and make her an even fifty pushel," said Nels, after they had backed the wagon up to the granary door. "Ve might as vell do it oop right, skence ve're at it."

Having carried out this suggestion, the two shovelled steadily, with short intervals of rest, for three quarters of an hour, the dark pile of grain in the wagon-box rising gradually until it stood flush with the top.

Good it was to look upon, cold and soft and yielding to the touch, this heaped-up wealth from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the mighty West. Charlie and Nels felt something of this as they viewed the results of their labours for a moment before hitching up the team.

"It's A number one hard," said Charlie, picking up a handful and sifting it slowly through his fingers, "and it'll fetch seventy-four cents. But you can't raise any worse on this old farm of ours if you try," he added, a little proudly. "Nor anywhere else in the Jim River Valley, for that matter."

As they approached the Roney place, looking dim and indistinct in the darkness, their voices hushed apprehensively, and the noise of the sled-runners slipping through the snow seemed to them to increase from a purr to a roar.

"Here, stob a minute!" whispered Nels, in agony of discovery. "Ve're magin' an awful noise. Ay'll go und take a beek."

He slipped away and cautiously approached the house. "Et's all right," he whispered, hoarsely, returning after a moment; "dere all asleeb. But go easy; Ay tank ve pest go easy." They seemed burdened all at once with the consciences of criminals, and went forward with almost guilty timidity.

"Thunder, dere's a bump! Vy don'd you drive garefuller, Sharlie?"

"Drive yourself, if you think you can do any better!"

As they came into the yard a dog suddenly ran out from the barn, barking furiously. Charlie reined up with an ejaculation of despair; "Look there, the dog! We're done for now, sure! Stop him, Nels! Throw somethin' at 'im!"

The noise seemed to their excited ears louder than the crash of artillery. Nels threw a piece of snow crust. The dog ran back a few steps, but his barking did not diminish.

"Here, hold the lines. I'll try to catch 'im." Charlie jumped from the wagon and approached the dog with coaxing words: "Come, doggie, good doggie, nice boy, come!"

His manoeuvre, however, merely served to increase the animal's frenzy. As Charlie approached the dog retired slowly toward the house, his head thrown back, and his rapid barking increased to a long-drawn howl.

"Good boy, come! Bother the brute! He'll wake up the whole household! Nice doggie! Phe-e----"

The noise, however, had no apparent effect upon the occupants of the house. All remained as dark and silent as ever.

"Sharlie, Sharlie, let him go!" cried Nels, in a voice smothered with laughter. "Ay go in dose parn; maype ha'll chase me."

His hope was well founded. The dog, observing this treacherous occupation by the enemy of his last harbour of refuge, gave pursuit and disappeared within the door, which Charlie, hard behind him, closed with a bang. There was the sound of a hurried scuffle within. The dog's barking gave place to terrified whinings, which in turn were suddenly quenched to a choking murmur.

"Gome in, Sharlie, kvick!"

"You got him?" queried Charlie, opening the door cautiously. "Did he bite you?"

"Na, yust ma mitten. Gat a sack or someding da die him oop in."

A sack was procured from somewhere, into which the dog, now silenced from sheer exhaustion and fright, was unceremoniously thrust, after which the sack was tied and flung into the wagon. This formidable obstacle overcome and the Roneys still slumbering peacefully, the rest was easy. The granary door was pried open and the wheat shovelled hurriedly in upon the empty floor. Charlie then crept up to the house and slipped his note under the door.

The sack was lifted from the now empty wagon and opened before the barn, whereupon its occupant slipped meekly out and retreated at once to a far corner, seemingly too much incensed at his discourteous treatment even to fling a volley of farewell barks at his departing captors.

"Vell," remarked Nels, with a sigh of relief as they gained the road, "Ay tank dose Roneys pelieve en Santa Claus now. Dose peen funny vay fer Santa Claus to coom."

Charlie's laugh was good to hear. "He didn't exactly come down the chimney, that's a fact, but it'll do at a pinch. We ought to have told them to get a present for the dog--collar and chain. I reckon he wouldn't hardly be thankful for it, though, eh?"

"Ay gass not. Ha liges ta haf hes nights ta hemself."

"Well, we had our fun, anyway. Sort of puts me in mind of old Wisconsin, somehow."

From far off over the valley, with its dismantled cornfields and snow-covered haystacks, beyond the ice-bound river, floated slow, and sonorous, the mellow clanging of church bells. They were ushering in the Christmas morn.

Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple, generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when the Jewish shepherds, guarding their flocks by night, read in their shining depths that in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ-Child was born.

The rising sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened with a creak, and Mr. Roney, still heavy-eyed with sleep, stumbled out upon the porch, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, blinked at the dazzling snow, and then shambled off toward the barn.

As he approached, the dog ran eagerly out, gambolled meekly around his feet and caressed his boots. The man patted him kindly.

"Hello, old boy! What were you yappin' around so for last night, huh? Grain-thieves? You needn't worry about them. There ain't nothin' left for them to steal. No, sir! If they got into that granary they'd have to take a lantern along to find a pint of wheat. I don't suppose," he added, reflectively, "that I could scrape up enough to feed the chickens this mornin', but I guess I might's well see."

He passed over to the little building. What he saw when he looked within seemed for a moment to produce no impression upon him whatever. He stared at the hillock of grain in motionless silence.

Finally Mr. Roney gave utterance to a single word, "Geewhilikins!" and started for the house on a run. Into the kitchen, where his wife was just starting the fire, the excited man burst like a whirlwind.

"Come out here, Mary!" he cried. "Come out here, quick!"

The worthy woman, unaccustomed to such demonstrations, looked at him in amazement.

"For goodness sake, what's come over you, Peter Roney?" she exclaimed. "Are you daft? Don't make such a noise! You'll wake the young ones, and I don't want them waked till need be, with no Christmas for 'em, poor little things!"

"Never mind the young 'uns," he replied. "Come on!"

As they passed out he noticed the slip of paper under the door and picked it up, but without comment. He charged down upon the granary, his wife, with a shawl over her head, close behind.

She peered in, apprehensively at first, then with eyes of widening wonder.

"Why, Peter!" she said, turning to him. "Why, Peter! What does--I thought----"

"You thought!" he broke in. "Me, too. But it ain't so. It means that we've got some of the best neighbours that ever was, a thinkin' of our young 'uns this way! Read that!" and he thrust the paper into her hand.

"Why, Peter!" she ejaculated again, weakly. Then suddenly she turned, and laying her head on his shoulder, began to sob softly.

"There, there," he said, patting her arm awkwardly. "Don't you go and cry now. Let's just be thankful to the good Lord for puttin' such fellers into the world as them fellers down the road. And now you run in and hurry up breakfast while I do up the chores. Then we'll hitch up and get into town 'fore the stores close. Tell the young 'uns Santy didn't get round last night with their things, but we've got word to meet him in town. Hey? Yes, I saw just the kind of sled Pete wants when I was up yesterday, and that china doll for Mollie. Yes, tell 'em anything you want. 'Twon't be too big. Santy Claus has come to Roney's ranch this year, sure!"

FOOTNOTE:

[X] This story was first printed in the _Youth's Companion_, vol. 76.

XXXIII

LITTLE GRETCHEN AND THE WOODEN SHOE[Y]

ELIZABETH HARRISON

THE following story is one of many which has drifted down to us from the story-loving nurseries and hearthstones of Germany. I cannot recall when I first had it told to me as a child, varied, of course, by different tellers, but always leaving that sweet, tender impression of God's loving care for the least of his children. I have since read different versions of it in at least a half-dozen story books for children.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in a country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the edge of a great forest, whose fir-trees extended for miles and miles to the north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one room in it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small square window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built an old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter usually curled a thin, blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.

Small as the house was, it was large enough for the two people who lived in it. I want to tell you a story to-day about these two people. One was an old, gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of the village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had come into the world with the huge mountains, and the great fir-trees, which stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled all over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy, self-sacrifice, of loving, anxious watching beside sick-beds, of quiet endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a thousand deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course, they could not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she was old and wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of them seemed to fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she had a kindly word for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her way to and from the village. With this old, old woman lived a very little girl. So bright and happy was she that the travellers who passed by the lonesome little house on the edge of the forest often thought of a sunbeam as they saw her. These two people were known in the village as Granny Goodyear and Little Gretchen.

The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller branches from the pine-trees in the forest. Gretchen and her Granny were up by daybreak each morning. After their simple breakfast of oatmeal, Gretchen would run to the little closet and fetch Granny's old woollen shawl, which seemed almost as old as Granny herself. Gretchen always claimed the right to put the shawl over her Granny's head, even though she had to climb onto the wooden bench to do it. After carefully pinning it under Granny's chin, she gave her a good-bye kiss, and Granny started out for her morning's work in the forest. This work was nothing more nor less than the gathering up of the twigs and branches which the autumn winds and winter frosts had thrown upon the ground. These were carefully gathered into a large bundle which Granny tied together with a strong linen band. She then managed to lift the bundle to her shoulder and trudged off to the village with it. Here she sold the fagots for kindling wood to the people of the village. Sometimes she would get only a few pence each day, and sometimes a dozen or more, but on this money little Gretchen and she managed to live; they had their home, and the forest kindly furnished the wood for the fire which kept them warm in cold weather.

In the summer time Granny had a little garden at the back of the hut where she raised, with little Gretchen's help, a few potatoes and turnips and onions. These she carefully stored away for winter use. To this meagre supply, the pennies, gained by selling the twigs from the forest, added the oatmeal for Gretchen and a little black coffee for Granny. Meat was a thing they never thought of having. It cost too much money. Still, Granny and Gretchen were very happy, because they loved each other dearly. Sometimes Gretchen would be left alone all day long in the hut, because Granny would have some work to do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late or too tired to talk.

Sometimes, when the weather was fine, or her Granny had an extra bundle of newly knitted stockings to take to the village, she would let little Gretchen go along with her. It chanced that one of these trips to the town came just the week before Christmas, and Gretchen's eyes were delighted by the sight of the lovely Christmas-trees which stood in the window of the village store. It seemed to her that she would never tire of looking at the knit dolls, the woolly lambs, the little wooden shops with their queer, painted men and women in them, and all the other fine things. She had never owned a plaything in her whole life; therefore, toys which you and I would not think much of, seemed to her to be very beautiful.

That night, after their supper of baked potatoes was over, and little Gretchen had cleared away the dishes and swept up the hearth, because Granny dear was so tired, she brought her own small wooden stool and placed it very near Granny's feet and sat down upon it, folding her hands on her lap. Granny knew that this meant she wanted to talk about something, so she smilingly laid away the large Bible which she had been reading, and took up her knitting, which was as much as to say: "Well, Gretchen, dear, Granny is ready to listen."

"Granny," said Gretchen slowly, "it's almost Christmas time, isn't it?"

"Yes, dearie," said Granny, "only five more days now," and then she sighed, but little Gretchen was so happy that she did not notice Granny's sigh.

"What do you think, Granny, I'll get this Christmas?" said she, looking up eagerly into Granny's face.

"Ah, child, child," said Granny, shaking her head, "you'll have no Christmas this year. We are too poor for that."

"Oh, but, Granny," interrupted little Gretchen, "think of all the beautiful toys we saw in the village to-day. Surely Santa Claus has sent enough for every little child."

"Ah, dearie," said Granny, "those toys are for people who can pay money for them, and we have no money to spend for Christmas toys."

"Well, Granny," said Gretchen, "perhaps some of the little children who live in the great house on the hill at the other end of the village will be willing to share some of their toys with me. They will be so glad to give some to a little girl who has none."

"Dear child, dear child," said Granny, leaning forward and stroking the soft, shiny hair of the little girl, "your heart is full of love. You would be glad to bring a Christmas to every child; but their heads are so full of what they are going to get that they forget all about anybody else but themselves." Then she sighed and shook her head.

"Well, Granny," said Gretchen, her bright, happy tone of voice growing a little less joyous, "perhaps the dear Santa Claus will show some of the village children how to make presents that do not cost money, and some of them may surprise me Christmas morning with a present. And, Granny, dear," added she, springing up from her low stool, "can't I gather some of the pine branches and take them to the old sick man who lives in the house by the mill, so that he can have the sweet smell of our pine forest in his room all Christmas day?"

"Yes, dearie," said Granny, "you may do what you can to make the Christmas bright and happy, but you must not expect any present yourself."

"Oh, but, Granny," said little Gretchen, her face brightening, "you forget all about the shining Christmas angels, who came down to earth and sang their wonderful song the night the beautiful Christ-Child was born! They are so loving and good that _they_ will not forget any little child. I shall ask my dear stars to-night to tell them of us. You know," she added, with a look of relief, "the stars are so very high that they must know the angels quite well, as they come and go with their messages from the loving God."