LITMIR.BIZ

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snow, there came low mooings of eagerness from the expectant cattle in the barn. As he lifted the massive wooden latch and opened the door, the horse whinnied to him from the innermost stall, there was a welcoming shuffle of hoofs, and a comfortable warmth puffed steamily out in his face. From the horse’s stall, from the stanchions of the cattle, big, soft eyes all turned to him. As he bundled the scented hay into the mangers, and listened to the contented snortings and puffings as soft muzzles tossed the fodder, he thought how happy these creatures were in their warm security. He thought how happy he was, and his wife, reunited to him after three years of forced and almost continuous separation. For him, and for the young wife, now recovering health in the tonic air of the spruce land after years of invalidism, this had promised to be a Christmas of unalloyed gladness. To one only, to the little one whose happiness was his continual thought, the day would be dark with the shattering of cherished hopes. The more he thought of it, the more he felt that it was not to be borne. Faint but piteous memories from his own childhood stirred in his brain, and he realized how irremediable, how final and desperate, seem a child’s 85 small sorrows. A sudden resolve took hold upon him. This bitterness, at least, his little one should not know. He jammed the pitchfork energetically back into the mow and left the barn with the quick step of an assured purpose.

      Three years before this, Dave Patton, after a series of misfortunes in the Settlement, which had reduced him to sharp poverty, had been forced to leave his wife and three-years-old baby with her own people, while he betook himself into the remotest wilderness to carve out a new home for them on a tract of forest land which was all that remained of his possessions. The land was fertile and carried good timber, and he had begun to prosper. But his wife’s ill-health had long made it impossible for her to face the hardships and risks of a pioneer’s life two days’ journey from the nearest civilization. Not till the preceding spring had Dave dared to bring his family out to the wilderness home that he had so long been making ready for them. Then, however, it had proved a success. In that high and healing air he had seen the colour slowly come back to his wife’s pale cheeks; and as for the child, until the great snows came and cut her off from this novel and interesting world, she had been absorbingly happy in the fellowship of the wilderness.

      When Dave re-entered the cabin, he found the table set over by the window, and his wife beating up the batter for the buckwheat pancakes that she was 86 about to griddle for breakfast. Lidey, still in her little blue flannel nightgown, but with beaded deerskin moccasins on her tiny feet, and the golden wilfulness of her hair tied back demurely with a blue ribbon, was seated at one end of the table, her eager face half buried in a sheet of paper. She was laboriously inditing, for perhaps the twentieth time, an epistle to “Sandy Claus,” telling him what she hoped he would bring her.

      If anything had been needed to confirm Dave Patton in his resolve, it was this. From the rapt child his eyes turned and met his wife’s inquiring glance.

      “I reckon I’ve got to go, Mary!” he said quietly. “Think you two kin git along all right fer four or five days? We ain’t likely to have no more snow this moon.”

      The woman let a little sigh escape her, but the look she gave her husband was one of cheerful acquiescence.

      “I guess you’re right, dear! I’ll have to let you go, though five days seems an awful long time to be alone here. I’ve been thinkin’ it over,” she continued, guarding her words so that Lidey should not understand––“an’ I just couldn’t bear to see it, Dave!”

      “That’s so!” assented the man. “I’ll leave heaps o’ wood an’ kindlin’ cut, an’ you’ll jest have to milk an’ look after the beasts, dear. Long’s you’re not scairt to be alone, it’s all right, I reckon!” 87

      “When’ll you start?” asked the wife, turning to pour the batter in little, sputtering, grey-white circles on to the hot, greased griddle.

      “First thing to-morrow mornin’!” answered Dave, seating himself at the table as the appetizing smell of the browning pancakes filled the room. “Snow’s jest right for snowshoein’, an’ I’ll git back easy Christmas Eve.”

      “You sure won’t be late, popsie?” interrupted the child, looking up with apprehension in her round eyes. “I jest wouldn’t care one mite for Sandy Claus if you weren’t here too!”

      “Mebbe I’ll git him to give me a lift in his little sleigh! Anyways, I’ll be back!” laughed Dave, gaily.

      II

      After Dave had gone, setting out at daybreak on his moose-hide snowshoes, which crunched musically on the hard snow, things went very well for a while at the lonely clearing. It was not so lonely, either, during the bright hours about midday, when the sunshine managed to accumulate something almost like warmth in the sheltered yard. About noon the two red and white cows and the yoke of wide-horned red oxen would stand basking in front of the lean-to, near the well, contentedly chewing 88 their cuds. At this time the hens, too, yellow and black and speckled, would come out and scratch in the litter, perennially undiscouraged by the fact that the only thing they found beneath it was the snow. The vivid crossbills, red and black and white, would come to the yard in flocks, and the quaker-coloured snow-buntings, and the big, trustful, childlike, pine grosbeaks, with the growing stain of rose-purple over their heads and necks. These kept Lidey interested, helping to pass the days that now, to her excited anticipations, seemed so long. Perhaps half a dozen times a day she would print a difficult communication to Santa Claus with some new idea, some new suggestion. These missives were mailed to the good Saint of Children by the swift medium of the roaring kitchen fire; and as the draught whisked their scorching fragments upwards, Lidey was satisfied that they went straight to their destination. The child’s joy in her anticipations was now the more complete because, since her father’s departure, her mother had ceased to discourage her hopes.

      On the day before Christmas Eve, however, the mother felt symptoms of a return of her old sickness. Immediately she grew anxious, realizing how necessary it was that she should keep well. This nervous apprehension hastened the result that she most dreaded. Her pain and her weakness grew worse hour by hour. Mastered by her memories of what 89 she had been through before, she was in no mood to throw off the attack. That evening, crawling to the barn with difficulty, she amazed the horse and the cattle by coaxing them to drink again, then piled their mangers with a two-days’ store of hay, and scattered buckwheat recklessly for the hens. The next morning she could barely drag herself out of bed to light the fire; and Lidey had to make her breakfast––which she did contentedly enough––on bread and butter and unlimited molasses.

      It was a weary day for the little one, in spite of her responsibilities. Muffled up and mittened, she was able, under her mother’s directions, to carry a little water to the stock in a small tin kettle, making many journeys. And she was able to keep the fire going. But the hours crept slowly, and she was so consumed with impatience that all her usual amusements lost their savour. Not even the rare delight of being allowed to cut pictures out of some old illustrated papers could divert her mind from its dazzling anticipations. But before Christmas could come, must come her father; and from noon onward she would keep running to the door every few minutes to peer expectantly down the trail. She was certain that, at the worst, he could not by any possibility be delayed beyond supper-time, for he was needed to get supper––or, rather, as Lidey expressed it, to help her get supper for mother! Lidey was not hungry, to be sure, but 90 she was getting mortally tired of unmitigated bread and butter and molasses.

      Supper-time, however, came and went, and no sign of Dave’s return. On the verge of tears, Lidey munched a little of the now distasteful food. Her mother, worn out with the pain, which had at last relaxed its grip, fell into a heavy sleep. There was no light in the cabin except the red glow from the open draught of the stove, and the intense, blue-white moonlight streaming in through the front window. The child’s impatience became intolerable.

      Flinging open the door for the hundredth time, she gazed out eagerly across the moonlit snow and down the trail. The cloudless moon, floating directly above it, transfigured that narrow and lonely road into a path to wonderland. In the mystic radiance––blue-white, but shot with faint, half-imagined flashes of emerald and violet––Lidey

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