The Christmas Miracle | Page 4

tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard
here, but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he
would fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through
Sunrise Gap!
Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness
long before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had
begun to whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken
themselves to bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and
flare pervaded every nook of the bright little house. Strings of
red-pepper-pods flaunted in festoons from the beams; the baby
slumbered under a gay quilt in his rude cradle, never far from his
mother's hand, but the bluff little boy was still up and about, although
his aspect, round and burly, in a scanty nightgown, gave token of
recognition of the fact that bed was his appropriate place. His shrill
plaintive voice rose ever and anon wakefully.
"I wanter hear a bear tale,--I wanter hear a bear tale."
Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to
devote himself to the narration,--a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung on
his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen
smilingly. She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil
took up the violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this
very house one day when all the family were away at the church in the

cove, and who mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to
picking out this tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil
embellished the imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
"Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil," Aurelia admonished him,
"daylight will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,--no wonder the
child won't go to bed." She seemed suddenly impressed with the
pervasive cheer. "What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How
could ennybody hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got
hyar in Sunrise Gap!"
On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early.
The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November
waned, rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the
gusty snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted
ranges. Drifts piled high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags
were begirt with gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise
Gap that kept so warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green
leaves and the red berries glowed with a mystic significance.
As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although
he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred
himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the
domestic provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not
deserved the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings.
Though he still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had
resisted the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia
had persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment of the
controversy, but even Aurelia he was disposed to forgive as time
passed on. When Christinas Day dawned, the vague sentiment began to
assume the definiteness of a purpose, and noontide found him on his
way to Sunrise Gap.
There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir, there

was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough light to
cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the
snow-covered ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he
drew near the mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the
massive ranges and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar
barking of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his
horse's hoofs was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded.
He would like to surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious
rancor for Basil's sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from the
thick growths of the holly, with the icy scintillations of its clustering
green leaves and red berries, he drew rein so