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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas Eve at Swamp's End
+
+Author: Norman Duncan
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #27612]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully
+preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+
+
+
+  CHRISTMAS
+  EVE
+  at
+  SWAMP'S
+  END
+
+
+  NORMAN DUNCAN
+
+[Illustration: "Make of this child, a Man"]
+
+
+
+
+  CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+  at SWAMP'S END
+
+
+  NORMAN DUNCAN
+  author of
+
+  THE MEASURE OF A MAN
+  DOCTOR LUKE OF THE
+  LABRADOR ETC
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  FLEMING H REVELL COMPANY
+
+  Copyright, 1911-1915
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  _A Selection from
+  THE MEASURE OF A MAN
+  A Tale of the Big Woods_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_THE WISTFUL HEART_
+
+
+It was long after noon in the far, big, white Northwest. Day was on the
+wing. Christmas Eve splendidly impended--thank God for unspoiled
+childish faith and joys of children everywhere! Christmas Eve was fairly
+within view and welcoming hail, at last, in the thickening eastern
+shadows. Long Day at its close. Day in a perturbation of blessed
+unselfishness. Day with its tasks of love not half accomplished. And Day
+near done! Bedtime coming round the world on the jump. Nine o'clock
+leaping from longitude to longitude. Night, impatient and determined,
+chasing all the children of the world in drowsy expectation to
+sleep--making a clean sweep of 'em, every one, with her soft, wide broom
+of dusk. "Nine o'clock? Shoo! Off you go! To-morrow's on the way.
+Soon--oh, soon! To-morrow's here when you fall asleep. Said 'em already,
+have you? Not another word from either of you. Not a whisper, ye
+grinning rascals! Cuddle down, little people of Christ's heart and
+leading. Snuggle close--closer yet, my children--that your arms may grow
+used to this loving. Another kiss from mother? Blessed Ones! A billion
+more, for nights and mornings, for all day long of all the years,
+waiting here on mother's lips. And now to sleep. Christmas _is_
+to-morrow. Hush! To-morrow. Yes; to-morrow. Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep!"
+And upon the flying heels of Night--but still far over seas from the
+blustering white Northwest where Pattie Batch was waiting at Swamp's End
+in the woods--the new Day, with jolly countenance, broad, rosy and
+delighted, was somewhere approaching, in a gale of childish laughter,
+blithely calling in its westward sweep to all Christian children to
+awaken to their peculiar and eternal joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Christmas weather in the big woods: a Christmas temperature like
+frozen steel--thirty below in the clearing of Swamp's End--and a
+rollicking wind, careering over the pines, and the swirling dust of snow
+in the metallic air. A cold, crisp crackling world! A Christmas land,
+too: a vast expanse of Christmas colour, from the Canadian line to the
+Big River--great, grave, green pines, white earth and a blood-red
+sunset! The low log-cabins of the lumber camps were smothered in snow;
+they were fringed with pendant ice at the eaves, and banked high with
+drifts, and all window-frosted. The trails were thigh deep and drifting.
+The pines--their great fall imminent, now--flaunted long, black arms in
+the gale; they creaked, they swished, they droned, they crackled with
+frost. It was coming on dusk. The deeper reaches of the forest were
+already dark. Horses and teamsters, sawyers, road-monkeys, axemen,
+swampers, punk-hunters and all, floundered from the bush, white with dry
+snow, icicled and frosted like a Christmas cake, to the roaring
+bunk-house fires, to a voracious employment at the cooks' long tables,
+and to an expanding festival jollity. Town? Sure! Swamp's End for
+Christmas--the lights and companionship of the bedraggled shanty
+lumber-town in the clearing of Swamp's End! Swamp's End for Gingerbread
+Jenkins! Swamp's End for Billy the Beast! Swamp's End--and the roaring
+hilarity thereof--for man and boy, straw-boss and cookee, of the
+lumber-jacks! Presently the dim trails from the Cant-hook cutting, from
+the Bottle River camps, from Snook's landing and the Yellow Tail works,
+poured the boys into town--a lusty, hilarious crew, like loosed
+school-boys on a lark, giving over, now, to the only distractions, it
+seemed--and John Fairmeadow maintained it--which the great world
+provided in the forests.
+
+Pattie Batch might have been aware of this--the log shack was on the
+edge of town--had not the window-panes been coated thick with Christmas
+frost. She might have heard rough laughter passing by--the Bottle River
+trail ran right past the door--had not the big Christmas wind snored in
+the stove, and fearsomely rattled the door, and shaken the cabin, and
+swept howling on. But she never in the world would have attended. Not in
+that emergency! She would not, for anything, have peeped out of the
+windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks
+flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so
+desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the
+attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching
+gray eyes in the whole wide world could bestow upon anything whatsoever.
+Christmas Eve, you see: Day done. Something of soft fawn-skin engaged
+her, it seemed, with white patches matched and arranged with marvellous
+exactitude: something made for warmth in the wind--something of small
+fashion, but long and indubitably capacious--something with a hood. A
+little cloak, possibly: I don't know. But I am sure that it could
+envelop, that it could boil or roast, that it could fairly smother--a
+baby! It was lined with golden-brown, crackling silk, which Pattie
+Batch's mother had left in her trunk, upon her last departure, poor
+woman! from the sordid world of Swamp's End to regions which were now
+become in Pattie Batch's loving vision Places of Light. And it was upon
+this treasured cloth that Pattie Batch's flashing needle was working
+like mad in the lamplight. A Christmas sacrifice: it was labour of love
+and the gift of treasure.
+
+Pattie Batch was lovely. Everybody knew it; and there's no denying it.
+Grief had not left her wan and apathetic. She had been "a little man."
+She had been so much of a little man that she was now much more of a
+little woman than ever she had been before. In respect to her bewitching
+endearments, there's no mincing matters, at all. It would shame a man to
+'hem and haw and qualify. She was adorable. Beauty of youth and heart of
+tenderness: a quaint little womanly child of seventeen--gowned, now, in
+a black dress, long-skirted, to be sure! of her mother's old-fashioned
+wearing. Gray eyes, wide, dark-lashed, sun-sparkling and shadowy, and
+willful dark hair, a sweetly tilted little nose, a boyish, masterful
+way, coquettish twinkles, dimples in most perilous places, rosy cheeks,
+a tender little figure, an aristocratic toss to her head: why,
+indeed--the catalogue of her charms has no end to it! Courage to boot,
+too--as though youth and loveliness were not sufficient endowment--and
+uncompromising honesty with herself and all the world. She took in
+washing from the camps: there was nothing else to do, with Gray Billy
+Batch lost in Rattle Water, and now decently stowed away by the Reverend
+John Fairmeadow. It was lonely in Gray Billy Batch's cabin, now, of
+course; it was sometimes almost intolerably so--and ghostly, too, with
+echoes of long-past footsteps and memories of soft motherly words.
+Pattie Batch, however, a practical little person, knew in her own mind,
+you must be informed, exactly how to still the haunting echoes and
+transform the memories into blessed companions of her busy, gentle
+solitude; but she had not as yet managed the solution.
+
+Pattie Batch wanted a baby. Companionship, of course, would be a mere
+by-product of a baby's presence in the cabin; the real wealth and
+advantage would be a glowing satisfaction in the baby. At any rate,
+Pattie Batch wanted one: she always had--and she simply couldn't help
+it. Babies, however, were not numerous at Swamp's End; in point of fact,
+there was only one--a perfectly adorable infant, it must be understood,
+a suitable child, and worthy, in every respect, of being heartily
+desired by any woman--which unhappily belonged to the bartender who
+lived with Pale Peter of the Red Elephant saloon. No use asking for
+_that_ baby! Not outright. It could be borrowed, however. Pattie Batch
+_had_ borrowed it; she had borrowed it frequently, of late, and had
+mysteriously measured it with a calculating eye, and had estimated, and
+scowled in doubt, and scratched her head, and pursed her sweet red lips,
+and had secretly spanned the baby, from chin to toe and across the back,
+with an industriously inquiring thumb and little finger. But a borrowed
+baby, it seems, is of no use whatsoever; the satisfaction is said to be
+temporary--nothing more--and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a
+stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie Batch wanted was a baby to
+_keep_--a baby she could call her own and cherish against meddling--a
+baby that should be so rosy and fat and curly, so neat and white, so
+scrubbed and highly polished from crown to toe-nails, that every mother
+in the land, beholding, would promptly expire on the spot of amazement,
+incredulity and sheer jealousy.
+
+There were babies at Elegant Corners--a frowzy, listless mud-hole of the
+woods, near by. They were all possessed by one mother, too. The last
+comer had appeared in the fall of the year; and Pattie Batch--when the
+great news came down to Swamp's End--had instantly taken the trail for
+Elegant Corners.
+
+"Got another, eh?" says she, flatly, to the wretched Mrs. Limp.
+
+"Uh-huh!" Mrs. Limp sighed and rolled her eyes, as though, God save us!
+the ultimate misfortune had fallen upon her. "Number eight," she
+groaned.
+
+"Don't you _like_ it?" Pattie demanded, hopefully.
+
+Mrs. Limp was so deeply submerged in tears that she failed to commit
+herself.
+
+"You _don't_ like it, eh?" Pattie pursued, hope immediately abounding.
+
+Mrs. Limp sniffed.
+
+"Well," said Pattie, her little heart all in a flutter--she was
+afflicted, too, with an adorable lisp in excitement--"I th'pothe I
+_ought_ t' be _thorry_."
+
+Mrs. Limp seemed dolefully to agree.
+
+Pattie Batch came then straight to the point. "I been thavin' up," said
+she. "I been hard at it for more 'n theven monthth."
+
+Mrs. Limp lifted her blue eyelids.
+
+"Yep," said Pattie, briskly; "an' I got thirty-four twenty-three right
+here in my thkirt. _Where'th that baby?_"
+
+The baby was fetched and deposited in her arms.
+
+"Boy or girl?" Pattie inquired, with business-like precision.
+
+"Boy," Mrs. Limp sighed, "thank God!"
+
+Pattie Batch was vastly disappointed. She had fancied a girl. It was a
+shock, indeed, to her ardour. It was so much of a shocking
+disappointment that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy--a _boy_!
+Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a
+boy--this boy, in fact, cleaned up--Pattie Batch was all the time
+running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes--yes, the
+child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and water might
+astonishingly improve--and, in fine, this little boy might--
+
+"Mithuth Limp," said Pattie, looking that lady straight in the eye,
+"I'll give you twenty-five dollarth for thith here baby. By George, I
+will!"
+
+The astonished mother jumped out of her chair and her lassitude at the
+same instant.
+
+"Not another thent!" Pattie craftily declared. "Here--take your baby."
+
+Mrs. Limp did not quite _take_ the baby. That would be but a pale
+indication of the speed, directness and outraged determination with
+which she acted. She snatched the baby away, with the precision of a
+brisk woodpecker after an escaping worm; and she hugged it until it
+howled for mercy--and she hushed it--and she crooned endearment--and she
+kissed the baby with such fervour and persistency that she saved its
+puckered face a washing. And then she turned--in a rage of
+indignation--in a storm of scorn--in a whirlwind of execration--upon
+poor little Pattie Batch. But Pattie Batch was gone. Discreet little
+Pattie Batch didn't need to be _told_! Her little feet were already
+pattering over the trail to Swamp's End; and she was crying as she ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Pattie Batch's wish for a baby went back to the very beginnings of
+things. Ask Gingerbread Jenkins. Gingerbread Jenkins knows. It was
+Gingerbread Jenkins who had found her, long ago--Pattie was little more
+than a baby herself, then--on the Bottle River Trail; and to Gingerbread
+Jenkins' astonishment the child was lugging a gun into the woods.
+
+"Where _you_ goin'?" says Gingerbread Jenkins.
+
+"Gunnin'."
+
+"Gunnin', eh? What for?"
+
+"Jutht gunnin'."
+
+"But what you gunnin' _for_?"
+
+"None o' your bithneth," says saucy little Pattie Batch.
+
+"It _is_ my business," Gingerbread Jenkins declared; "an' if you don't
+tell me what you're gunnin' for I'll have you home in a jiffy."
+
+"Well," says Pattie, "I'm--gunnin'."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Storks," says Pattie.
+
+"Goin' t' _kill_ 'em?" Gingerbread inquired.
+
+"No," says Pattie.
+
+"What's your gun for?"
+
+"I'm goin' t' wing a couple," says Pattie, "an' tame 'em."
+
+That was Pattie Batch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_A GIFT NEGLECTED_
+
+
+Well, well! there was only one baby at Swamp's End; and that baby Pattie
+Batch had adopted. In her mind, of course: _quite_ on the sly. Nobody
+could adopt Pale Peter's bartender's baby in any other way. And here was
+Christmas come again! Day gone beyond the last waving pines in a cold
+flush of red and gold: Christmas Eve here at last. Pattie Batch's soft
+arms were still wanting; there were a thousand kisses waiting on her
+tender lips for giving; her voice was all attuned to crooning sweetest
+lullabys; but her heart was empty--save for a child of mist and wishes.
+It was dark, now; but though the wind was still rollicking down there
+was no snow blowing, and the shy stars were winking wide-eyed upon the
+busy world and all the myriad mysteries it exhibited out-of-doors. The
+gift of silk and fawn-skin was finished. A perfect gift: fashioned and
+accomplished with all the dexterity Pattie Batch could employ. "Just as
+if," she had determined, "it was for my _own_ baby." And Pattie
+Batch--after an agitated glance at the clock--quickly shoed and cloaked
+and hooded her sweet and blooming little self; and she listened to the
+lusty wind, and she put a most adorable little nose out-of-doors to
+sense the frosty weather, and she fluttered about the warm room in
+search of her mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log
+in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having
+made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast
+and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind,
+the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with
+herself, too, and with the blessed Night of the year.
+
+She was exceedingly cautious; and she was not observed--not for the
+smallest flash. The thing was accomplished in mystery. Before she was
+aware of it--before her heart had eased its agitation--she was safely
+out again; and there, in plain view, on the table, in Pale Peter's
+living-room behind the saloon, lay the gift of silk and fawn-skin for
+Pale Peter's bartender's baby--a Christmas mystery for them all to solve
+as best they could.
+
+Pattie Batch peeked in at the window.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "if they'll _ever_--if they'll _ever in the
+world_--find out I done it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Pale Peter's bartender came in. This was Charlie the Infidel.
+Pattie Batch rose on her cold little toes the better to observe. The
+frost exploded like pistol shots under her feet. She started. Really,
+the little mite began to feel--and rather exquisitely--like a thief in
+the night. There was another explosion of frost as she crept nearer her
+peek-hole in the glowing window. Whew! How deliciously mysterious it
+was! Nothing much, however, happened in Pale Peter's living-room to
+continue the thrill. Charlie the Infidel, in haste, chanced to brush the
+fawn-skin cloak off the table. He paused impatiently to pick it up, and
+to fling it back in a heap: whereupon he pressed on to the bar. _That_
+wasn't very thrilling, you may be sure; but Charlie the Infidel, after
+all, was only a father, and Pattie Batch, her courage not at all
+diminished, still waited in the frosty shadow, quite absorbed in
+expectation. Entered, then, Mrs. Bartender--a blonde, bored,
+novel-reading little lady in splendid array. First of all, as Pattie
+Batch observed, she yawned; secondly, she yawned again. And she was
+about to attempt the extraordinary feat of yawning a third time--and
+doubtless would have achieved it--when her washed blue eyes chanced to
+fall on the fawn-skin coat, with its lining of golden-brown silk
+shimmering in the lamplight. She picked it up, of course, in a bored
+sort of way; and she was positively on the very verge of being
+interested in it when--would you believe it?--she attacked the third
+yawn--or the third yawn attacked her--and however it was, the yawn was
+accomplished with such dexterity, such certainty, and with such
+satisfaction to the lady, that she quite forgot to look at the fawn-skin
+cloak again.
+
+"By George, she's tired!" Pattie Batch exclaimed to herself.
+
+Pattie Batch sighed: she sighed twice, in point of fact--the second
+sigh, a great, long one, discovering itself somewhere very deep
+within--and then she went home disconsolate.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_THE MAKING OF A MAN_
+
+
+Soon after dark, John Fairmeadow, with a pack on his broad back, swung
+from the Jumping Jimmy trail into the clearing of Swamp's End, ceasing
+only then his high, vibrant song, and came striding down the huddled
+street, a big man in rare humour with life, labour and the night. A
+shadow--not John Fairmeadow's shadow--was in cautious pursuit; but of
+this dark, secret follower John Fairmeadow was not aware. Near the Café
+of Egyptian Delights he stumbled. The pursuing Shadow gasped; and John
+Fairmeadow was so mightily exercised for his pack that he ejaculated in
+a fashion most unministerial, but recovered his footing with a jerk, and
+doubtless near turned pale with apprehension. But the pack was safe--the
+delicate contents, whatever they were, quite undisturbed. John
+Fairmeadow gently adjusted the pack, stamped the snow from his soles, as
+a precautionary measure, wiped the frost from his brows and eyelids, in
+the same cautious wisdom, and, still followed by the Shadow, strode on,
+but with infinitely more care. At the Red Elephant--Pale Peter's glowing
+saloon--he turned in. The bar, as always, in these days, gave the young
+apostle to those unrighteous parts a roaring welcome. It was become the
+fashion: big, bubbling, rosy John Fairmeadow, with the square jaw, the
+frank, admonitory tongue, the tender and persuasive heart, the
+competent, not unwilling fists, was welcome everywhere, from the Bottle
+River camps and the Cant-hook cutting to the bunk-houses of the Yellow
+Tail, from beyond the Divide to the lower waters of the Big River, in
+every saloon, bunk-house, superintendent's office and cook's quarters of
+his wide green parish--welcome to preach and to pray, to bury, marry,
+gossip and scold, and, upon goodly provocation, to fight, all to the
+same righteous end. A clean man: a big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
+long-legged body, with a soul to match it--a glowing heart and a purpose
+lifted high. There was no mistaking the man by men.
+
+John Fairmeadow, clad like a lumber-jack, upright, now, in the full
+stature of a man, body and soul, grinned like a delighted schoolboy. His
+fine head was thrown back, in the pride of clean, sure strength; his
+broad face was in a rosy glow; his great chest still heaved with the
+labour of a stormy trail; his gray eyes flashed and twinkled in the soft
+light of Pale Peter's many lamps. Twinkled?--and with merriment?--in
+that long, stifling, roaring, smoky, fume-laden room? For a moment: then
+closed, a bit worn, and melancholy, too; but presently, with reviving
+faith to urge them, opened wide and heartily, and began to twinkle
+again. The bar was in festive array: Christmas greens, red berries,
+ribbons, tissue-paper and gleaming tinfoil--flash of mirrors, bright
+colour, branches of pine, cedar and spruce from the big balsamic woods.
+It was crowded with lumber-jacks--great fellows from the forest, big of
+body and passion, here gathered in celebration of the festival. John
+Fairmeadow, getting all at once and vigorously under way, shouted "Merry
+Christmas, boys!" and "Hello, Charlie!" to the bartender; and he shook
+hands with Pale Peter, slapped Billy the Beast on the back, roared a
+greeting to Gingerbread Jenkins, exclaimed "Merry Christmas!" with the
+speed and detonation of a Gatling gun, inquired after Butcher Long's
+brood of kids in the East, and cried "Hello, old man!" and "What's the
+good word from Yellow Tail?" and "How d'ye do?" and "Glad t' see you!"
+and everywhere shook hands and clapped backs--carefully preserving,
+however, his own back from being slapped--and devoutly ejaculated "God
+bless you, men! A Merry Christmas to you all and every one!" and
+eventually disappeared in the direction of Pale Peter's living-quarters,
+leaving an uproar of genial delight behind him.
+
+John Fairmeadow's Shadow, however, unable to enter the bar of the Red
+Elephant, waited in seclusion across the windy street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Bartender was still yawning as John Fairmeadow entered upon her
+_ennui_; but when the big minister, exercising the softest sort of
+caution, slipped off his gigantic pack, and deposited it with
+exquisitely delicate care, and a face of deep concern, on the table, she
+opened her faded eyes with interested curiosity. And as for the contents
+of the pack, there's no more concealing them! The article must now be
+declared and produced. It was a baby. Of course, it was a baby! The
+thing has been obvious all along. John Fairmeadow's foundling: left in a
+basket at the threshold of his temporary lodging-room at Big Rapids that
+very morning--first to John Fairmeadow's consternation, and then to his
+gleeful delight. As for the baby itself--it was presently unswathed--it
+is quite beyond me to describe its excellencies of appearance and
+conduct. John Fairmeadow himself couldn't make the attempt and escape
+annihilation. It was a real and regular baby, however. One might
+suggest, in inadequate description, that it was a plump baby; one might
+add that it was a lusty baby. It had hair; it had a pucker of amazement;
+its eyes, two of them, were properly disposed in its head; its hands
+were of what are called rose-leaf dimensions; it had, apparently, a
+fixed habit of squirming; it had no teeth. Evidently a healthy baby--a
+baby that any mother might be proud of--doubtless a marvel of infantile
+perfection in every respect. I should not venture to dispute such an
+assertion; nor would John Fairmeadow--nor any other bold gentleman of
+Swamp's End and Elegant Corners--_not in these later days_!
+
+Mrs. Bartender, of course, lifted her languid white hands in uttermost
+astonishment.
+
+"There!" John Fairmeadow exploded, looking round like a showman. "What
+d'ye think o' _that_? Eh?"
+
+"But, Mr. Fairmeadow," the poor lady stammered, "what have you brought
+it _here_ for?"
+
+"Why not?" John Fairmeadow demanded. "Why not, indeed? It's perfectly
+polite."
+
+"What am I to _do_ with it?"
+
+"It isn't intoxicated, my good woman," John Fairmeadow ran on, in great
+wrath; "and it's never been in jail."
+
+"But my _dear_ Mr. Fairmeadow, do be sensible; what am I to _do_ with
+it?"
+
+"Why, ah--I should think," John Fairmeadow ventured--the baby was still
+sleeping like a brick--"that you might first of all--ah--resuscitate it.
+Would a--a slight poke in the ribs--provoke animation?"
+
+But the baby didn't need a poke in the ribs. It didn't need any other
+sort of resuscitation. Not _that_ baby! The self-dependent, courageous,
+perfectly competent and winning little rascal resuscitated itself.
+Instantly, too--and positively--and apparently without the least effort
+in the world. Moreover--and with remarkable directness--it demanded what
+it wanted--and got it. And having been nourished to its satisfaction
+from young Master Bartender's silver-mounted bottle (which John
+Fairmeadow then secretly slipped into his pocket)--and having yawned in
+a fashion so tremendous that Mrs. Bartender herself could never hope to
+equal that infinite expression of boredom--and having smiled, and having
+wriggled, and having giggled, and cooed, and attempted--actually
+attempted--to get its great toe in its mouth without extraneous
+assistance of any sort whatsoever--even without the slightest suggestion
+that such a thing would be an amazingly engaging trick in a baby of its
+age and degree--it burst into a gurgle of glee so wondrously genuine and
+infectious that poor, bored Mrs. Bartender herself was quite unable to
+resist it, and promptly, and publicly, and finally committed herself to
+the assertion that the baby was a dear, wherever it came from.
+
+John Fairmeadow snatched it from the table, and was about to make off
+with it, when Mrs. Bartender interposed.
+
+"My _dear_ Mr. Fairmeadow," said she, "that child will simply catch its
+_death_ of cold!"
+
+There was something handy, however--something of silk and fawn-skin--and
+with this enveloping the baby John Fairmeadow swung in a roar with it to
+the bar--and held it aloft in all that seething wickedness--pure symbol
+of the blessed Christmas festival. And there was a sensation, of
+course--a sensation beginning in vociferous ejaculations, but presently
+failing to a buzz of conjecture. There were questions to follow: to
+which John Fairmeadow answered that he had found the baby--that the baby
+was nobody's baby--that the baby was his baby by right of finders
+keepers--that the baby was everybody's baby--and that the baby would
+presently be somebody's much-loved baby, _that_ he'd vouch for! The
+baby, now resting content in John Fairmeadow's arms, was diffidently
+approached and examined. Gingerbread Jenkins poked a finger at it, and
+said, in a voice of the most inimical description, "Get out!" without
+disturbing the baby's serene equanimity in the slightest. Young Billy
+Lush, charging his soft, boyish voice with all the horrifying intent he
+could muster, threatened to "catch" the baby, as though bent upon
+devouring it on the spot; but the baby only chuckled with delight. Billy
+the Beast incautiously approached a finger near the baby's stout
+abdomen; and the baby--with a perfectly fearless glance into the very
+depths of the Beast's frowzy beard--clutched the finger and smiled like
+an angel. Long Butcher Long attempted to tweak the baby's nose; but the
+effort was a ridiculous failure, practiced so clumsily on an object so
+small, and the only effect was to cause the baby to achieve a tremendous
+wriggle and a loud scream of laughter. These experiments were variously
+repeated, but all with the same cherubic result; the baby conducted
+itself with admirable self-possession and courage, as though, indeed, it
+had been used, every hour of its life, to the company of riotous
+lumber-jacks in town.
+
+The inevitable happened, of course: Billy the Beast, whose pocket was
+smoking with his wages, proposed the baby's health, and there was an
+uproarious rush for the bar.
+
+"Just a minute, boys!" John Fairmeadow drawled.
+
+It was an awkward moment: but the jacks were by this time used to being
+bidden by this man who was a man, and the rush was forthwith halted.
+
+"Just a minute, boys," John Fairmeadow repeated, "for your minister!"
+
+The baby was then held aloft in John Fairmeadow's big, kind, sensitive
+hands, and from this safe perch softly smiled upon the crowd of flushed
+and bearded faces all roundabout.
+
+"Boys," John Fairmeadow drawled, significantly, "this is the only sort
+of church we have in these woods."
+
+There was a laughing stir and shuffling: but presently a tolerant
+silence fell, in obedience to the custom John Fairmeadow had
+established; and caps came off, and pipes were smothered.
+
+"A little away from the bar, please," the big preacher suggested.
+
+Pale Peter nodded to Charlie the Infidel; and the clink of glasses
+ceased--and the bottles were left in peace--and the hands of the
+bartender rested.
+
+"Now, boys," said John Fairmeadow, letting the foundling fall softly
+into his arms, "I'm not going to preach to you to-night, though God
+knows you need it! I'm just going to pray for the baby. _Dear Father of
+us wilful Children of the Vale_," he began, at once, lifting a placid,
+believing face above the smiling child in his arms, "_we ask Thy
+guardianship of this child. In us is no perfect counsel for him nor any
+help whatsoever that he may surely apprehend. In Thine acceptable wisdom
+Thou settest Thy little ones in a world where presently only Thou canst
+teach them: teach Thou then this little one. Thou alone knowest the
+right path for a little boy's inquiring feet: lead then this little boy.
+Thou alone art saving helper to an adventuring lad: help then this lad.
+Thou alone art all-perceiving and persuasive, alone art Truth Teller to
+a bewildered youth and Good Example in his wondering sight: be then Good
+Example and Teller of Truth to this youth. Thou alone art in the
+fashioning ways of Thine own world a Maker of Men: make then of this
+little child a Man. We ask no easy path for him--no unmanly way--no
+indulgent tempering of the winds. We pray for no riches--for no great
+deeds of his doing--for no ease at all nor any satisfaction. We ask of
+Thee in his behalf good Manhood. Lead him where true men must go: lead
+him where they learn the all of life; lead him where they level down and
+build again; lead him where in righteous strength his hands may lift the
+fallen; lead him where in anger he may strike; lead him where his tears
+may fall; lead him where his heart may find a pure desire. O Almighty
+God, Lover of children, Father of us all alike, make of this child, in
+the measure of his service and in the stature of his soul, a Man.
+Amen._"
+
+Amen, indeed!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END_
+
+
+As for poor little Pattie Batch, all this while, she sat alone, a
+doleful heart, in the shack at the edge of the big, black woods, quite
+unaware of the momentous advent of a Christmas baby at Swamp's End. The
+Christmas wind was still high, still shaking the cabin, still rattling
+the door, still howling like a wild beast in the night, still roaring in
+the red stove; and snow was falling again--a dry dust of snow which
+veiled the wondering stars. It was no longer a jolly, rollicking
+Christmas wind. The gale, now, it seemed, was become inimical to the
+lonely child: wild, vaunting, merciless, terrible with cold. Pattie
+Batch, disconsolate, sighed more often than a tender heart could bear to
+sanction in a child, and found swift visions in the glowing coals,
+though no enlivening tableaux; but--dear brave and human little
+one!--she presently ejaculated "Shoot it, anyhow!" and began at once to
+cheer up. And she was comfortably toasting her shins, in a placid
+delusion of stormy, mile-wide privacy, her mother's old-fashioned long
+black skirt drawn up from her dainty toes (of which, of course, the
+imminent John Fairmeadow was never permitted to be aware), when, all at
+once, and clamouring above the old wind's howling, there was a
+tremendous knocking at the door--a knocking so loud, and commanding, and
+prolonged, that Pattie Batch jumped like a fawn in alarm, and stood for
+a moment with palpitating heart and a mighty inclination to fly to the
+bedroom and lock herself in. Presently, however, she mustered courage to
+call "Come in!" in a sufficient tone: whereupon, the door was
+immediately flung wide, and big John Fairmeadow, with a wild, dusty
+blast of the gale, strode in with a gigantic basket, and slammed the
+door behind him, leaving the shivering, tenacious Shadow, which had
+secretly followed from Swamp's End, to keep cold vigil outside.
+
+"Hello, there, Pattie Batch!" John Fairmeadow roared. "Merry Christmas!"
+
+Pattie Batch stared.
+
+"Hello, I say!" John Fairmeadow cried, again. "Merry Christmas, ye
+rascal!"
+
+Pattie Batch, gulping her delight, and quite incapable of uttering a
+word, because of it, flew to the kitchen, instead of to the bedroom, and
+returned with a broom, with which, while the Shadow peeked in at the
+window, she brushed, and scraped, and slapped John Fairmeadow so
+vigorously that John Fairmeadow scampered into a corner and stood at
+bay.
+
+"Look out, there, Polly Pry!" he shouted, in a rage; "don't you _dare_
+look at my basket."
+
+Pattie Batch had been doing nothing of the sort.
+
+"Don't you so much as _squint_ at my basket," John Fairmeadow growled.
+
+Pattie Batch instantly _did_, of course--and with her eyes wide and
+sparkling, too. It was really something more than a squint.
+
+"Keep your eyes off that basket, Miss Pry!" John Fairmeadow commanded,
+again. "Huh!" he complained, emerging from his refuge and throwing his
+mackinaw and cap on the floor; "anybody'd think there was something in
+that basket for _you_."
+
+"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy.
+
+"Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!"
+
+Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat--and
+she stood on tiptoe--and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head
+away--(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing
+eyes!)--and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching
+conglomeration of hope, amusement, curiosity and adoring childish
+affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better
+of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know _you_, Mithter Fairmeadow."
+
+John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.
+
+"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific
+fright.
+
+"Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head."
+He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But--aha!--just you
+wait and _see_."
+
+"Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th
+thertainly _thome_thin' t' eat," she declared.
+
+"Good _enough_ to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air
+of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in
+all the world.
+
+"Ith it a chicken?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than
+chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your
+hands off."
+
+"Is it anything for the house?"
+
+"No, indeed; the house is for _it_."
+
+Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity.
+
+"The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that
+this whole place--and all the world--belongs to just what's in that
+basket."
+
+"I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in
+bewilderment, "I can't guess what it _could_ be."
+
+Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket
+covering--_stirred_!
+
+"Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed.
+
+"Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No
+_ma'am_!"
+
+Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it
+move."
+
+"It is _not_!"
+
+"Ith a kitten, then."
+
+"It is _not_ a kitten!"
+
+Thereupon--while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged
+that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost
+on the window-pane--thereupon, without any warning save a second slight
+movement of the blanket, a sound--and not by any means a growl--the
+thing was certainly not a dog--a sound proceeded from the depths of the
+basket.
+
+Pattie Batch jumped away.
+
+"Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?"
+
+Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and
+shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing
+hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me
+quick: ith it--ith it a--a----"
+
+John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and
+there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and
+smiling, lay--
+
+THE BABY!
+
+"By George!" screamed Pattie Batch; "it _ith_ a baby!"
+
+"Your baby," John Fairmeadow whispered. "God's Christmas gift--to you."
+
+Pattie Batch--adorable, young mother!--reverently approached, and,
+bending with parted lips, eyes shining, and hands laid upon her
+trembling heart, for the first time gazed content upon the little face.
+She lifted, then--and with what awe and tenderness!--the tiny mortal
+from the warm basket, and pressed it, with knowing arms, against her
+warmer, softer young breast. "My baby!" she crooned, her lips close to
+its ear; "my little baby--my own little baby!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan.
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+               position: absolute; right: 2%; text-indent: 0em;
+               padding: 1px 1px; font-style: normal; line-height: 110%;
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas Eve at Swamp's End
+
+Author: Norman Duncan
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #27612]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tn">
+
+<p class="center"><big><b>Transcriber&#8217;s Note</b></big></p>
+
+<p>The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious
+typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="600" height="952" alt="" title="Front Cover" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image2.jpg" width="400" height="596" alt="&quot;Make of this child, a Man&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Make of this child, a Man&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image3.jpg" width="400" height="634" alt="" title="Title Page" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1911&ndash;1915<br />
+FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY<br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/image4.jpg" width="200" height="594" alt="" title="Clock" />
+</div>
+<p class="center"><i>A Selection from<br />
+THE MEASURE OF A MAN<br />
+A Tale of the Big Woods</i><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image5.jpg" width="600" height="256" alt="" title="A Wistful Heart" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_WISTFUL_HEART" id="THE_WISTFUL_HEART"></a><i>THE WISTFUL HEART</i></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">I</span>T was long after noon in the far, big, white Northwest. Day was on the
+wing. Christmas Eve splendidly impended&mdash;thank God for unspoiled
+childish faith and joys of children everywhere! Christmas Eve was fairly
+within view and welcoming hail, at last, in the thickening eastern
+shadows. Long Day at its close. Day in a perturbation of blessed
+unselfishness. Day with its tasks of love not half accomplished. And Day
+near done! Bedtime coming round the world on the jump. Nine o'clock
+leaping from longitude to longitude. Night, impatient and determined,
+chasing all the children of the world in drowsy expectation to
+sleep&mdash;making a clean sweep of 'em, every one, with her soft, wide broom
+of dusk. "Nine o'clock? Shoo! Off you go! To-morrow's on the way.
+Soon&mdash;oh, soon! To-morrow's here when you fall asleep. Said 'em already,
+have you? Not another word from either of you. Not a whisper, ye
+grinning rascals! Cuddle down, little people of Christ's heart and
+leading. Snuggle close&mdash;closer yet, my children&mdash;that your arms may grow
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>used to this loving. Another kiss from mother? Blessed Ones! A billion
+more, for nights and mornings, for all day long of all the years,
+waiting here on mother's lips. And now to sleep. Christmas <i>is</i>
+to-morrow. Hush! To-morrow. Yes; to-morrow. Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep!"
+And upon the flying heels of Night&mdash;but still far over seas from the
+blustering white Northwest where Pattie Batch was waiting at Swamp's End
+in the woods&mdash;the new Day, with jolly countenance, broad, rosy and
+delighted, was somewhere approaching, in a gale of childish laughter,
+blithely calling in its westward sweep to all Christian children to
+awaken to their peculiar and eternal joy.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 20%;' />
+
+<p>It was Christmas weather in the big woods: a Christmas temperature like
+frozen steel&mdash;thirty below in the clearing of Swamp's End&mdash;and a
+rollicking wind, careering over the pines, and the swirling dust of snow
+in the metallic air. A cold, crisp crackling world! A Christmas land,
+too: a vast expanse of Christmas colour, from the Canadian line to the
+Big River&mdash;great, grave, green pines, white earth and a blood-red
+sunset! The low log-cabins of the lumber camps were smothered in snow;
+they were fringed with pendant ice at the eaves, and banked high with
+drifts, and all window-frosted. The trails were thigh deep and drifting.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>The pines&mdash;their great fall imminent, now&mdash;flaunted long, black arms in
+the gale; they creaked, they swished, they droned, they crackled with
+frost. It was coming on dusk. The deeper reaches of the forest were
+already dark. Horses and teamsters, sawyers, road-monkeys, axemen,
+swampers, punk-hunters and all, floundered from the bush, white with dry
+snow, icicled and frosted like a Christmas cake, to the roaring
+bunk-house fires, to a voracious employment at the cooks' long tables,
+and to an expanding festival jollity. Town? Sure! Swamp's End for
+Christmas&mdash;the lights and companionship of the bedraggled shanty
+lumber-town in the clearing of Swamp's End! Swamp's End for Gingerbread
+Jenkins! Swamp's End for Billy the Beast! Swamp's End&mdash;and the roaring
+hilarity thereof&mdash;for man and boy, straw-boss and cookee, of the
+lumber-jacks! Presently the dim trails from the Cant-hook cutting, from
+the Bottle River camps, from Snook's landing and the Yellow Tail works,
+poured the boys into town&mdash;a lusty, hilarious crew, like loosed
+school-boys on a lark, giving over, now, to the only distractions, it
+seemed&mdash;and John Fairmeadow maintained it&mdash;which the great world
+provided in the forests.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch might have been aware of this&mdash;the log shack was on the
+edge of town&mdash;had not the window-panes been coated thick with Christmas
+frost. She might have heard rough laughter passing by&mdash;the Bottle River
+trail ran right past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the door&mdash;had not the big Christmas wind snored in
+the stove, and fearsomely rattled the door, and shaken the cabin, and
+swept howling on. But she never in the world would have attended. Not in
+that emergency! She would not, for anything, have peeped out of the
+windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks
+flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so
+desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the
+attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching
+gray eyes in the whole wide world could bestow upon anything whatsoever.
+Christmas Eve, you see: Day done. Something of soft fawn-skin engaged
+her, it seemed, with white patches matched and arranged with marvellous
+exactitude: something made for warmth in the wind&mdash;something of small
+fashion, but long and indubitably capacious&mdash;something with a hood. A
+little cloak, possibly: I don't know. But I am sure that it could
+envelop, that it could boil or roast, that it could fairly smother&mdash;a
+baby! It was lined with golden-brown, crackling silk, which Pattie
+Batch's mother had left in her trunk, upon her last departure, poor
+woman! from the sordid world of Swamp's End to regions which were now
+become in Pattie Batch's loving vision Places of Light. And it was upon
+this treasured cloth that Pattie Batch's flashing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> needle was working
+like mad in the lamplight. A Christmas sacrifice: it was labour of love
+and the gift of treasure.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch was lovely. Everybody knew it; and there's no denying it.
+Grief had not left her wan and apathetic. She had been "a little man."
+She had been so much of a little man that she was now much more of a
+little woman than ever she had been before. In respect to her bewitching
+endearments, there's no mincing matters, at all. It would shame a man to
+'hem and haw and qualify. She was adorable. Beauty of youth and heart of
+tenderness: a quaint little womanly child of seventeen&mdash;gowned, now, in
+a black dress, long-skirted, to be sure! of her mother's old-fashioned
+wearing. Gray eyes, wide, dark-lashed, sun-sparkling and shadowy, and
+willful dark hair, a sweetly tilted little nose, a boyish, masterful
+way, coquettish twinkles, dimples in most perilous places, rosy cheeks,
+a tender little figure, an aristocratic toss to her head: why,
+indeed&mdash;the catalogue of her charms has no end to it! Courage to boot,
+too&mdash;as though youth and loveliness were not sufficient endowment&mdash;and
+uncompromising honesty with herself and all the world. She took in
+washing from the camps: there was nothing else to do, with Gray Billy
+Batch lost in Rattle Water, and now decently stowed away by the Reverend
+John Fairmeadow. It was lonely in Gray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> Billy Batch's cabin, now, of
+course; it was sometimes almost intolerably so&mdash;and ghostly, too, with
+echoes of long-past footsteps and memories of soft motherly words.
+Pattie Batch, however, a practical little person, knew in her own mind,
+you must be informed, exactly how to still the haunting echoes and
+transform the memories into blessed companions of her busy, gentle
+solitude; but she had not as yet managed the solution.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch wanted a baby. Companionship, of course, would be a mere
+by-product of a baby's presence in the cabin; the real wealth and
+advantage would be a glowing satisfaction in the baby. At any rate,
+Pattie Batch wanted one: she always had&mdash;and she simply couldn't help
+it. Babies, however, were not numerous at Swamp's End; in point of fact,
+there was only one&mdash;a perfectly adorable infant, it must be understood,
+a suitable child, and worthy, in every respect, of being heartily
+desired by any woman&mdash;which unhappily belonged to the bartender who
+lived with Pale Peter of the Red Elephant saloon. No use asking for
+<i>that</i> baby! Not outright. It could be borrowed, however. Pattie Batch
+<i>had</i> borrowed it; she had borrowed it frequently, of late, and had
+mysteriously measured it with a calculating eye, and had estimated, and
+scowled in doubt, and scratched her head, and pursed her sweet red lips,
+and had secretly spanned the baby, from chin to toe and across the back,
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> an industriously inquiring thumb and little finger. But a borrowed
+baby, it seems, is of no use whatsoever; the satisfaction is said to be
+temporary&mdash;nothing more&mdash;and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a
+stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie Batch wanted was a baby to
+<i>keep</i>&mdash;a baby she could call her own and cherish against meddling&mdash;a
+baby that should be so rosy and fat and curly, so neat and white, so
+scrubbed and highly polished from crown to toe-nails, that every mother
+in the land, beholding, would promptly expire on the spot of amazement,
+incredulity and sheer jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>There were babies at Elegant Corners&mdash;a frowzy, listless mud-hole of the
+woods, near by. They were all possessed by one mother, too. The last
+comer had appeared in the fall of the year; and Pattie Batch&mdash;when the
+great news came down to Swamp's End&mdash;had instantly taken the trail for
+Elegant Corners.</p>
+
+<p>"Got another, eh?" says she, flatly, to the wretched Mrs. Limp.</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh!" Mrs. Limp sighed and rolled her eyes, as though, God save us!
+the ultimate misfortune had fallen upon her. "Number eight," she
+groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you <i>like</i> it?" Pattie demanded, hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Limp was so deeply submerged in tears that she failed to commit
+herself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p><p>"You <i>don't</i> like it, eh?" Pattie pursued, hope immediately abounding.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Limp sniffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Pattie, her little heart all in a flutter&mdash;she was
+afflicted, too, with an adorable lisp in excitement&mdash;"I th'pothe I
+<i>ought</i> t' be <i>thorry</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Limp seemed dolefully to agree.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch came then straight to the point. "I been thavin' up," said
+she. "I been hard at it for more 'n theven monthth."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Limp lifted her blue eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"Yep," said Pattie, briskly; "an' I got thirty-four twenty-three right
+here in my thkirt. <i>Where'th that baby?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The baby was fetched and deposited in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Boy or girl?" Pattie inquired, with business-like precision.</p>
+
+<p>"Boy," Mrs. Limp sighed, "thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch was vastly disappointed. She had fancied a girl. It was a
+shock, indeed, to her ardour. It was so much of a shocking
+disappointment that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy&mdash;a <i>boy</i>!
+Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a
+boy&mdash;this boy, in fact, cleaned up&mdash;Pattie Batch was all the time
+running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes&mdash;yes, the
+child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> water might
+astonishingly improve&mdash;and, in fine, this little boy might&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mithuth Limp," said Pattie, looking that lady straight in the eye,
+"I'll give you twenty-five dollarth for thith here baby. By George, I
+will!"</p>
+
+<p>The astonished mother jumped out of her chair and her lassitude at the
+same instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Not another thent!" Pattie craftily declared. "Here&mdash;take your baby."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Limp did not quite <i>take</i> the baby. That would be but a pale
+indication of the speed, directness and outraged determination with
+which she acted. She snatched the baby away, with the precision of a
+brisk woodpecker after an escaping worm; and she hugged it until it
+howled for mercy&mdash;and she hushed it&mdash;and she crooned endearment&mdash;and she
+kissed the baby with such fervour and persistency that she saved its
+puckered face a washing. And then she turned&mdash;in a rage of
+indignation&mdash;in a storm of scorn&mdash;in a whirlwind of execration&mdash;upon
+poor little Pattie Batch. But Pattie Batch was gone. Discreet little
+Pattie Batch didn't need to be <i>told</i>! Her little feet were already
+pattering over the trail to Swamp's End; and she was crying as she ran.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 20%;' />
+
+<p>But Pattie Batch's wish for a baby went back to the very beginnings of
+things. Ask Gingerbread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Jenkins. Gingerbread Jenkins knows. It was
+Gingerbread Jenkins who had found her, long ago&mdash;Pattie was little more
+than a baby herself, then&mdash;on the Bottle River Trail; and to Gingerbread
+Jenkins' astonishment the child was lugging a gun into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"Where <i>you</i> goin'?" says Gingerbread Jenkins.</p>
+
+<p>"Gunnin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Gunnin', eh? What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jutht gunnin'."</p>
+
+<p>"But what you gunnin' <i>for</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"None o' your bithneth," says saucy little Pattie Batch.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> my business," Gingerbread Jenkins declared; "an' if you don't
+tell me what you're gunnin' for I'll have you home in a jiffy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," says Pattie, "I'm&mdash;gunnin'."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Storks," says Pattie.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' t' <i>kill</i> 'em?" Gingerbread inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"No," says Pattie.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your gun for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' t' wing a couple," says Pattie, "an' tame 'em."</p>
+
+<p>That was Pattie Batch.</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image6.jpg" width="600" height="276" alt="" title="A Gift Neglected" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_GIFT_NEGLECTED" id="A_GIFT_NEGLECTED"></a><i>A GIFT NEGLECTED</i></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">W</span>ELL, well! there was only one baby at Swamp's End; and that baby Pattie
+Batch had adopted. In her mind, of course: <i>quite</i> on the sly. Nobody
+could adopt Pale Peter's bartender's baby in any other way. And here was
+Christmas come again! Day gone beyond the last waving pines in a cold
+flush of red and gold: Christmas Eve here at last. Pattie Batch's soft
+arms were still wanting; there were a thousand kisses waiting on her
+tender lips for giving; her voice was all attuned to crooning sweetest
+lullabys; but her heart was empty&mdash;save for a child of mist and wishes.
+It was dark, now; but though the wind was still rollicking down there
+was no snow blowing, and the shy stars were winking wide-eyed upon the
+busy world and all the myriad mysteries it exhibited out-of-doors. The
+gift of silk and fawn-skin was finished. A perfect gift: fashioned and
+accomplished with all the dexterity Pattie Batch could employ. "Just as
+if," she had determined, "it was for my <i>own</i> baby." And Pattie
+Batch&mdash;after an agitated glance at the clock&mdash;quickly shoed and cloaked
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> hooded her sweet and blooming little self; and she listened to the
+lusty wind, and she put a most adorable little nose out-of-doors to
+sense the frosty weather, and she fluttered about the warm room in
+search of her mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log
+in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having
+made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast
+and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind,
+the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with
+herself, too, and with the blessed Night of the year.</p>
+
+<p>She was exceedingly cautious; and she was not observed&mdash;not for the
+smallest flash. The thing was accomplished in mystery. Before she was
+aware of it&mdash;before her heart had eased its agitation&mdash;she was safely
+out again; and there, in plain view, on the table, in Pale Peter's
+living-room behind the saloon, lay the gift of silk and fawn-skin for
+Pale Peter's bartender's baby&mdash;a Christmas mystery for them all to solve
+as best they could.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch peeked in at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," she mused, "if they'll <i>ever</i>&mdash;if they'll <i>ever in the
+world</i>&mdash;find out I done it!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 20%;' />
+
+<p>Presently Pale Peter's bartender came in. This was Charlie the Infidel.
+Pattie Batch rose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> on her cold little toes the better to observe. The
+frost exploded like pistol shots under her feet. She started. Really,
+the little mite began to feel&mdash;and rather exquisitely&mdash;like a thief in
+the night. There was another explosion of frost as she crept nearer her
+peek-hole in the glowing window. Whew! How deliciously mysterious it
+was! Nothing much, however, happened in Pale Peter's living-room to
+continue the thrill. Charlie the Infidel, in haste, chanced to brush the
+fawn-skin cloak off the table. He paused impatiently to pick it up, and
+to fling it back in a heap: whereupon he pressed on to the bar. <i>That</i>
+wasn't very thrilling, you may be sure; but Charlie the Infidel, after
+all, was only a father, and Pattie Batch, her courage not at all
+diminished, still waited in the frosty shadow, quite absorbed in
+expectation. Entered, then, Mrs. Bartender&mdash;a blonde, bored,
+novel-reading little lady in splendid array. First of all, as Pattie
+Batch observed, she yawned; secondly, she yawned again. And she was
+about to attempt the extraordinary feat of yawning a third time&mdash;and
+doubtless would have achieved it&mdash;when her washed blue eyes chanced to
+fall on the fawn-skin coat, with its lining of golden-brown silk
+shimmering in the lamplight. She picked it up, of course, in a bored
+sort of way; and she was positively on the very verge of being
+interested in it when&mdash;would you believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> it?&mdash;she attacked the third
+yawn&mdash;or the third yawn attacked her&mdash;and however it was, the yawn was
+accomplished with such dexterity, such certainty, and with such
+satisfaction to the lady, that she quite forgot to look at the fawn-skin
+cloak again.</p>
+
+<p>"By George, she's tired!" Pattie Batch exclaimed to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch sighed: she sighed twice, in point of fact&mdash;the second
+sigh, a great, long one, discovering itself somewhere very deep
+within&mdash;and then she went home disconsolate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image7.jpg" width="400" height="393" alt="" title="Pattie Batch" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image8.jpg" width="600" height="234" alt="" title="The Making of a Man" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MAKING_OF_A_MAN" id="THE_MAKING_OF_A_MAN"></a><i>THE MAKING OF A MAN</i></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">S</span>OON after dark, John Fairmeadow, with a pack on his broad back, swung
+from the Jumping Jimmy trail into the clearing of Swamp's End, ceasing
+only then his high, vibrant song, and came striding down the huddled
+street, a big man in rare humour with life, labour and the night. A
+shadow&mdash;not John Fairmeadow's shadow&mdash;was in cautious pursuit; but of
+this dark, secret follower John Fairmeadow was not aware. Near the Caf&eacute;
+of Egyptian Delights he stumbled. The pursuing Shadow gasped; and John
+Fairmeadow was so mightily exercised for his pack that he ejaculated in
+a fashion most unministerial, but recovered his footing with a jerk, and
+doubtless near turned pale with apprehension. But the pack was safe&mdash;the
+delicate contents, whatever they were, quite undisturbed. John
+Fairmeadow gently adjusted the pack, stamped the snow from his soles, as
+a precautionary measure, wiped the frost from his brows and eyelids, in
+the same cautious wisdom, and, still followed by the Shadow, strode on,
+but with infinitely more care. At the Red Elephant&mdash;Pale Peter's glowing
+saloon&mdash;he turned in. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> bar, as always, in these days, gave the young
+apostle to those unrighteous parts a roaring welcome. It was become the
+fashion: big, bubbling, rosy John Fairmeadow, with the square jaw, the
+frank, admonitory tongue, the tender and persuasive heart, the
+competent, not unwilling fists, was welcome everywhere, from the Bottle
+River camps and the Cant-hook cutting to the bunk-houses of the Yellow
+Tail, from beyond the Divide to the lower waters of the Big River, in
+every saloon, bunk-house, superintendent's office and cook's quarters of
+his wide green parish&mdash;welcome to preach and to pray, to bury, marry,
+gossip and scold, and, upon goodly provocation, to fight, all to the
+same righteous end. A clean man: a big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
+long-legged body, with a soul to match it&mdash;a glowing heart and a purpose
+lifted high. There was no mistaking the man by men.</p>
+
+<p>John Fairmeadow, clad like a lumber-jack, upright, now, in the full
+stature of a man, body and soul, grinned like a delighted schoolboy. His
+fine head was thrown back, in the pride of clean, sure strength; his
+broad face was in a rosy glow; his great chest still heaved with the
+labour of a stormy trail; his gray eyes flashed and twinkled in the soft
+light of Pale Peter's many lamps. Twinkled?&mdash;and with merriment?&mdash;in
+that long, stifling, roaring, smoky, fume-laden room? For a moment: then
+closed, a bit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> worn, and melancholy, too; but presently, with reviving
+faith to urge them, opened wide and heartily, and began to twinkle
+again. The bar was in festive array: Christmas greens, red berries,
+ribbons, tissue-paper and gleaming tinfoil&mdash;flash of mirrors, bright
+colour, branches of pine, cedar and spruce from the big balsamic woods.
+It was crowded with lumber-jacks&mdash;great fellows from the forest, big of
+body and passion, here gathered in celebration of the festival. John
+Fairmeadow, getting all at once and vigorously under way, shouted "Merry
+Christmas, boys!" and "Hello, Charlie!" to the bartender; and he shook
+hands with Pale Peter, slapped Billy the Beast on the back, roared a
+greeting to Gingerbread Jenkins, exclaimed "Merry Christmas!" with the
+speed and detonation of a Gatling gun, inquired after Butcher Long's
+brood of kids in the East, and cried "Hello, old man!" and "What's the
+good word from Yellow Tail?" and "How d'ye do?" and "Glad t' see you!"
+and everywhere shook hands and clapped backs&mdash;carefully preserving,
+however, his own back from being slapped&mdash;and devoutly ejaculated "God
+bless you, men! A Merry Christmas to you all and every one!" and
+eventually disappeared in the direction of Pale Peter's living-quarters,
+leaving an uproar of genial delight behind him.</p>
+
+<p>John Fairmeadow's Shadow, however, unable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> to enter the bar of the Red
+Elephant, waited in seclusion across the windy street.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 20%;' />
+
+<p>Mrs. Bartender was still yawning as John Fairmeadow entered upon her
+<i>ennui</i>; but when the big minister, exercising the softest sort of
+caution, slipped off his gigantic pack, and deposited it with
+exquisitely delicate care, and a face of deep concern, on the table, she
+opened her faded eyes with interested curiosity. And as for the contents
+of the pack, there's no more concealing them! The article must now be
+declared and produced. It was a baby. Of course, it was a baby! The
+thing has been obvious all along. John Fairmeadow's foundling: left in a
+basket at the threshold of his temporary lodging-room at Big Rapids that
+very morning&mdash;first to John Fairmeadow's consternation, and then to his
+gleeful delight. As for the baby itself&mdash;it was presently unswathed&mdash;it
+is quite beyond me to describe its excellencies of appearance and
+conduct. John Fairmeadow himself couldn't make the attempt and escape
+annihilation. It was a real and regular baby, however. One might
+suggest, in inadequate description, that it was a plump baby; one might
+add that it was a lusty baby. It had hair; it had a pucker of amazement;
+its eyes, two of them, were properly disposed in its head; its hands
+were of what are called rose-leaf dimensions;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> it had, apparently, a
+fixed habit of squirming; it had no teeth. Evidently a healthy baby&mdash;a
+baby that any mother might be proud of&mdash;doubtless a marvel of infantile
+perfection in every respect. I should not venture to dispute such an
+assertion; nor would John Fairmeadow&mdash;nor any other bold gentleman of
+Swamp's End and Elegant Corners&mdash;<i>not in these later days</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bartender, of course, lifted her languid white hands in uttermost
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" John Fairmeadow exploded, looking round like a showman. "What
+d'ye think o' <i>that</i>? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Fairmeadow," the poor lady stammered, "what have you brought
+it <i>here</i> for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" John Fairmeadow demanded. "Why not, indeed? It's perfectly
+polite."</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to <i>do</i> with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't intoxicated, my good woman," John Fairmeadow ran on, in great
+wrath; "and it's never been in jail."</p>
+
+<p>"But my <i>dear</i> Mr. Fairmeadow, do be sensible; what am I to <i>do</i> with
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ah&mdash;I should think," John Fairmeadow ventured&mdash;the baby was still
+sleeping like a brick&mdash;"that you might first of all&mdash;ah&mdash;resuscitate it.
+Would a&mdash;a slight poke in the ribs&mdash;provoke animation?"</p>
+
+<p>But the baby didn't need a poke in the ribs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> It didn't need any other
+sort of resuscitation. Not <i>that</i> baby! The self-dependent, courageous,
+perfectly competent and winning little rascal resuscitated itself.
+Instantly, too&mdash;and positively&mdash;and apparently without the least effort
+in the world. Moreover&mdash;and with remarkable directness&mdash;it demanded what
+it wanted&mdash;and got it. And having been nourished to its satisfaction
+from young Master Bartender's silver-mounted bottle (which John
+Fairmeadow then secretly slipped into his pocket)&mdash;and having yawned in
+a fashion so tremendous that Mrs. Bartender herself could never hope to
+equal that infinite expression of boredom&mdash;and having smiled, and having
+wriggled, and having giggled, and cooed, and attempted&mdash;actually
+attempted&mdash;to get its great toe in its mouth without extraneous
+assistance of any sort whatsoever&mdash;even without the slightest suggestion
+that such a thing would be an amazingly engaging trick in a baby of its
+age and degree&mdash;it burst into a gurgle of glee so wondrously genuine and
+infectious that poor, bored Mrs. Bartender herself was quite unable to
+resist it, and promptly, and publicly, and finally committed herself to
+the assertion that the baby was a dear, wherever it came from.</p>
+
+<p>John Fairmeadow snatched it from the table, and was about to make off
+with it, when Mrs. Bartender interposed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>"My <i>dear</i> Mr. Fairmeadow," said she, "that child will simply catch its
+<i>death</i> of cold!"</p>
+
+<p>There was something handy, however&mdash;something of silk and fawn-skin&mdash;and
+with this enveloping the baby John Fairmeadow swung in a roar with it to
+the bar&mdash;and held it aloft in all that seething wickedness&mdash;pure symbol
+of the blessed Christmas festival. And there was a sensation, of
+course&mdash;a sensation beginning in vociferous ejaculations, but presently
+failing to a buzz of conjecture. There were questions to follow: to
+which John Fairmeadow answered that he had found the baby&mdash;that the baby
+was nobody's baby&mdash;that the baby was his baby by right of finders
+keepers&mdash;that the baby was everybody's baby&mdash;and that the baby would
+presently be somebody's much-loved baby, <i>that</i> he'd vouch for! The
+baby, now resting content in John Fairmeadow's arms, was diffidently
+approached and examined. Gingerbread Jenkins poked a finger at it, and
+said, in a voice of the most inimical description, "Get out!" without
+disturbing the baby's serene equanimity in the slightest. Young Billy
+Lush, charging his soft, boyish voice with all the horrifying intent he
+could muster, threatened to "catch" the baby, as though bent upon
+devouring it on the spot; but the baby only chuckled with delight. Billy
+the Beast incautiously approached a finger near the baby's stout
+abdomen; and the baby&mdash;with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> a perfectly fearless glance into the very
+depths of the Beast's frowzy beard&mdash;clutched the finger and smiled like
+an angel. Long Butcher Long attempted to tweak the baby's nose; but the
+effort was a ridiculous failure, practiced so clumsily on an object so
+small, and the only effect was to cause the baby to achieve a tremendous
+wriggle and a loud scream of laughter. These experiments were variously
+repeated, but all with the same cherubic result; the baby conducted
+itself with admirable self-possession and courage, as though, indeed, it
+had been used, every hour of its life, to the company of riotous
+lumber-jacks in town.</p>
+
+<p>The inevitable happened, of course: Billy the Beast, whose pocket was
+smoking with his wages, proposed the baby's health, and there was an
+uproarious rush for the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute, boys!" John Fairmeadow drawled.</p>
+
+<p>It was an awkward moment: but the jacks were by this time used to being
+bidden by this man who was a man, and the rush was forthwith halted.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute, boys," John Fairmeadow repeated, "for your minister!"</p>
+
+<p>The baby was then held aloft in John Fairmeadow's big, kind, sensitive
+hands, and from this safe perch softly smiled upon the crowd of flushed
+and bearded faces all roundabout.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>"Boys," John Fairmeadow drawled, significantly, "this is the only sort
+of church we have in these woods."</p>
+
+<p>There was a laughing stir and shuffling: but presently a tolerant
+silence fell, in obedience to the custom John Fairmeadow had
+established; and caps came off, and pipes were smothered.</p>
+
+<p>"A little away from the bar, please," the big preacher suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Pale Peter nodded to Charlie the Infidel; and the clink of glasses
+ceased&mdash;and the bottles were left in peace&mdash;and the hands of the
+bartender rested.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boys," said John Fairmeadow, letting the foundling fall softly
+into his arms, "I'm not going to preach to you to-night, though God
+knows you need it! I'm just going to pray for the baby. <i>Dear Father of
+us wilful Children of the Vale</i>," he began, at once, lifting a placid,
+believing face above the smiling child in his arms, "<i>we ask Thy
+guardianship of this child. In us is no perfect counsel for him nor any
+help whatsoever that he may surely apprehend. In Thine acceptable wisdom
+Thou settest Thy little ones in a world where presently only Thou canst
+teach them: teach Thou then this little one. Thou alone knowest the
+right path for a little boy's inquiring feet: lead then this little boy.
+Thou alone art saving helper to an adventuring lad: help then this lad.
+Thou alone art all-perceiving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and persuasive, alone art Truth Teller to
+a bewildered youth and Good Example in his wondering sight: be then Good
+Example and Teller of Truth to this youth. Thou alone art in the
+fashioning ways of Thine own world a Maker of Men: make then of this
+little child a Man. We ask no easy path for him&mdash;no unmanly way&mdash;no
+indulgent tempering of the winds. We pray for no riches&mdash;for no great
+deeds of his doing&mdash;for no ease at all nor any satisfaction. We ask of
+Thee in his behalf good Manhood. Lead him where true men must go: lead
+him where they learn the all of life; lead him where they level down and
+build again; lead him where in righteous strength his hands may lift the
+fallen; lead him where in anger he may strike; lead him where his tears
+may fall; lead him where his heart may find a pure desire. O Almighty
+God, Lover of children, Father of us all alike, make of this child, in
+the measure of his service and in the stature of his soul, a Man.
+Amen.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Amen, indeed!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image9.jpg" width="500" height="233" alt="" title="Men and Boy" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="600" height="230" alt="" title="Christmas Eve at Swamps End" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_EVE_AT_SWAMPS_END" id="CHRISTMAS_EVE_AT_SWAMPS_END"></a><i>CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END</i></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">A</span>S for poor little Pattie Batch, all this while, she sat alone, a
+doleful heart, in the shack at the edge of the big, black woods, quite
+unaware of the momentous advent of a Christmas baby at Swamp's End. The
+Christmas wind was still high, still shaking the cabin, still rattling
+the door, still howling like a wild beast in the night, still roaring in
+the red stove; and snow was falling again&mdash;a dry dust of snow which
+veiled the wondering stars. It was no longer a jolly, rollicking
+Christmas wind. The gale, now, it seemed, was become inimical to the
+lonely child: wild, vaunting, merciless, terrible with cold. Pattie
+Batch, disconsolate, sighed more often than a tender heart could bear to
+sanction in a child, and found swift visions in the glowing coals,
+though no enlivening tableaux; but&mdash;dear brave and human little
+one!&mdash;she presently ejaculated "Shoot it, anyhow!" and began at once to
+cheer up. And she was comfortably toasting her shins, in a placid
+delusion of stormy, mile-wide privacy, her mother's old-fashioned long
+black skirt drawn up from her dainty toes (of which, of course, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+imminent John Fairmeadow was never permitted to be aware), when, all at
+once, and clamouring above the old wind's howling, there was a
+tremendous knocking at the door&mdash;a knocking so loud, and commanding, and
+prolonged, that Pattie Batch jumped like a fawn in alarm, and stood for
+a moment with palpitating heart and a mighty inclination to fly to the
+bedroom and lock herself in. Presently, however, she mustered courage to
+call "Come in!" in a sufficient tone: whereupon, the door was
+immediately flung wide, and big John Fairmeadow, with a wild, dusty
+blast of the gale, strode in with a gigantic basket, and slammed the
+door behind him, leaving the shivering, tenacious Shadow, which had
+secretly followed from Swamp's End, to keep cold vigil outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, there, Pattie Batch!" John Fairmeadow roared. "Merry Christmas!"</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch stared.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, I say!" John Fairmeadow cried, again. "Merry Christmas, ye
+rascal!"</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch, gulping her delight, and quite incapable of uttering a
+word, because of it, flew to the kitchen, instead of to the bedroom, and
+returned with a broom, with which, while the Shadow peeked in at the
+window, she brushed, and scraped, and slapped John Fairmeadow so
+vigorously that John Fairmeadow scampered into a corner and stood at
+bay.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>"Look out, there, Polly Pry!" he shouted, in a rage; "don't you <i>dare</i>
+look at my basket."</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch had been doing nothing of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you so much as <i>squint</i> at my basket," John Fairmeadow growled.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch instantly <i>did</i>, of course&mdash;and with her eyes wide and
+sparkling, too. It was really something more than a squint.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your eyes off that basket, Miss Pry!" John Fairmeadow commanded,
+again. "Huh!" he complained, emerging from his refuge and throwing his
+mackinaw and cap on the floor; "anybody'd think there was something in
+that basket for <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!"</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat&mdash;and
+she stood on tiptoe&mdash;and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head
+away&mdash;(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing
+eyes!)&mdash;and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching
+conglomeration of hope, amusement, curiosity and adoring childish
+affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better
+of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know <i>you</i>, Mithter Fairmeadow."</p>
+
+<p>John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific
+fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head."
+He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But&mdash;aha!&mdash;just you
+wait and <i>see</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th
+thertainly <i>thome</i>thin' t' eat," she declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Good <i>enough</i> to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air
+of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in
+all the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Ith it a chicken?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than
+chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your
+hands off."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it anything for the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed; the house is for <i>it</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that
+this whole place&mdash;and all the world&mdash;belongs to just what's in that
+basket."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in
+bewilderment, "I can't guess what it <i>could</i> be."</p>
+
+<p>Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket
+covering&mdash;<i>stirred</i>!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p><p>"Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No
+<i>ma'am</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it
+move."</p>
+
+<p>"It is <i>not</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ith a kitten, then."</p>
+
+<p>"It is <i>not</i> a kitten!"</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon&mdash;while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged
+that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost
+on the window-pane&mdash;thereupon, without any warning save a second slight
+movement of the blanket, a sound&mdash;and not by any means a growl&mdash;the
+thing was certainly not a dog&mdash;a sound proceeded from the depths of the
+basket.</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch jumped away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?"</p>
+
+<p>Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and
+shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing
+hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me
+quick: ith it&mdash;ith it a&mdash;a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and
+there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and
+smiling, lay&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Baby!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>"By George!" screamed Pattie Batch; "it <i>ith</i> a baby!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your baby," John Fairmeadow whispered. "God's Christmas gift&mdash;to you."</p>
+
+<p>Pattie Batch&mdash;adorable, young mother!&mdash;reverently approached, and,
+bending with parted lips, eyes shining, and hands laid upon her
+trembling heart, for the first time gazed content upon the little face.
+She lifted, then&mdash;and with what awe and tenderness!&mdash;the tiny mortal
+from the warm basket, and pressed it, with knowing arms, against her
+warmer, softer young breast. "My baby!" she crooned, her lips close to
+its ear; "my little baby&mdash;my own little baby!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="500" height="398" alt="" title="Little Baby" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Christmas Eve at Swamp's End
+
+Author: Norman Duncan
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #27612]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully
+preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+
+
+
+  CHRISTMAS
+  EVE
+  at
+  SWAMP'S
+  END
+
+
+  NORMAN DUNCAN
+
+[Illustration: "Make of this child, a Man"]
+
+
+
+
+  CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+  at SWAMP'S END
+
+
+  NORMAN DUNCAN
+  author of
+
+  THE MEASURE OF A MAN
+  DOCTOR LUKE OF THE
+  LABRADOR ETC
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  FLEMING H REVELL COMPANY
+
+  Copyright, 1911-1915
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  _A Selection from
+  THE MEASURE OF A MAN
+  A Tale of the Big Woods_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_THE WISTFUL HEART_
+
+
+It was long after noon in the far, big, white Northwest. Day was on the
+wing. Christmas Eve splendidly impended--thank God for unspoiled
+childish faith and joys of children everywhere! Christmas Eve was fairly
+within view and welcoming hail, at last, in the thickening eastern
+shadows. Long Day at its close. Day in a perturbation of blessed
+unselfishness. Day with its tasks of love not half accomplished. And Day
+near done! Bedtime coming round the world on the jump. Nine o'clock
+leaping from longitude to longitude. Night, impatient and determined,
+chasing all the children of the world in drowsy expectation to
+sleep--making a clean sweep of 'em, every one, with her soft, wide broom
+of dusk. "Nine o'clock? Shoo! Off you go! To-morrow's on the way.
+Soon--oh, soon! To-morrow's here when you fall asleep. Said 'em already,
+have you? Not another word from either of you. Not a whisper, ye
+grinning rascals! Cuddle down, little people of Christ's heart and
+leading. Snuggle close--closer yet, my children--that your arms may grow
+used to this loving. Another kiss from mother? Blessed Ones! A billion
+more, for nights and mornings, for all day long of all the years,
+waiting here on mother's lips. And now to sleep. Christmas _is_
+to-morrow. Hush! To-morrow. Yes; to-morrow. Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep!"
+And upon the flying heels of Night--but still far over seas from the
+blustering white Northwest where Pattie Batch was waiting at Swamp's End
+in the woods--the new Day, with jolly countenance, broad, rosy and
+delighted, was somewhere approaching, in a gale of childish laughter,
+blithely calling in its westward sweep to all Christian children to
+awaken to their peculiar and eternal joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Christmas weather in the big woods: a Christmas temperature like
+frozen steel--thirty below in the clearing of Swamp's End--and a
+rollicking wind, careering over the pines, and the swirling dust of snow
+in the metallic air. A cold, crisp crackling world! A Christmas land,
+too: a vast expanse of Christmas colour, from the Canadian line to the
+Big River--great, grave, green pines, white earth and a blood-red
+sunset! The low log-cabins of the lumber camps were smothered in snow;
+they were fringed with pendant ice at the eaves, and banked high with
+drifts, and all window-frosted. The trails were thigh deep and drifting.
+The pines--their great fall imminent, now--flaunted long, black arms in
+the gale; they creaked, they swished, they droned, they crackled with
+frost. It was coming on dusk. The deeper reaches of the forest were
+already dark. Horses and teamsters, sawyers, road-monkeys, axemen,
+swampers, punk-hunters and all, floundered from the bush, white with dry
+snow, icicled and frosted like a Christmas cake, to the roaring
+bunk-house fires, to a voracious employment at the cooks' long tables,
+and to an expanding festival jollity. Town? Sure! Swamp's End for
+Christmas--the lights and companionship of the bedraggled shanty
+lumber-town in the clearing of Swamp's End! Swamp's End for Gingerbread
+Jenkins! Swamp's End for Billy the Beast! Swamp's End--and the roaring
+hilarity thereof--for man and boy, straw-boss and cookee, of the
+lumber-jacks! Presently the dim trails from the Cant-hook cutting, from
+the Bottle River camps, from Snook's landing and the Yellow Tail works,
+poured the boys into town--a lusty, hilarious crew, like loosed
+school-boys on a lark, giving over, now, to the only distractions, it
+seemed--and John Fairmeadow maintained it--which the great world
+provided in the forests.
+
+Pattie Batch might have been aware of this--the log shack was on the
+edge of town--had not the window-panes been coated thick with Christmas
+frost. She might have heard rough laughter passing by--the Bottle River
+trail ran right past the door--had not the big Christmas wind snored in
+the stove, and fearsomely rattled the door, and shaken the cabin, and
+swept howling on. But she never in the world would have attended. Not in
+that emergency! She would not, for anything, have peeped out of the
+windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks
+flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so
+desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the
+attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching
+gray eyes in the whole wide world could bestow upon anything whatsoever.
+Christmas Eve, you see: Day done. Something of soft fawn-skin engaged
+her, it seemed, with white patches matched and arranged with marvellous
+exactitude: something made for warmth in the wind--something of small
+fashion, but long and indubitably capacious--something with a hood. A
+little cloak, possibly: I don't know. But I am sure that it could
+envelop, that it could boil or roast, that it could fairly smother--a
+baby! It was lined with golden-brown, crackling silk, which Pattie
+Batch's mother had left in her trunk, upon her last departure, poor
+woman! from the sordid world of Swamp's End to regions which were now
+become in Pattie Batch's loving vision Places of Light. And it was upon
+this treasured cloth that Pattie Batch's flashing needle was working
+like mad in the lamplight. A Christmas sacrifice: it was labour of love
+and the gift of treasure.
+
+Pattie Batch was lovely. Everybody knew it; and there's no denying it.
+Grief had not left her wan and apathetic. She had been "a little man."
+She had been so much of a little man that she was now much more of a
+little woman than ever she had been before. In respect to her bewitching
+endearments, there's no mincing matters, at all. It would shame a man to
+'hem and haw and qualify. She was adorable. Beauty of youth and heart of
+tenderness: a quaint little womanly child of seventeen--gowned, now, in
+a black dress, long-skirted, to be sure! of her mother's old-fashioned
+wearing. Gray eyes, wide, dark-lashed, sun-sparkling and shadowy, and
+willful dark hair, a sweetly tilted little nose, a boyish, masterful
+way, coquettish twinkles, dimples in most perilous places, rosy cheeks,
+a tender little figure, an aristocratic toss to her head: why,
+indeed--the catalogue of her charms has no end to it! Courage to boot,
+too--as though youth and loveliness were not sufficient endowment--and
+uncompromising honesty with herself and all the world. She took in
+washing from the camps: there was nothing else to do, with Gray Billy
+Batch lost in Rattle Water, and now decently stowed away by the Reverend
+John Fairmeadow. It was lonely in Gray Billy Batch's cabin, now, of
+course; it was sometimes almost intolerably so--and ghostly, too, with
+echoes of long-past footsteps and memories of soft motherly words.
+Pattie Batch, however, a practical little person, knew in her own mind,
+you must be informed, exactly how to still the haunting echoes and
+transform the memories into blessed companions of her busy, gentle
+solitude; but she had not as yet managed the solution.
+
+Pattie Batch wanted a baby. Companionship, of course, would be a mere
+by-product of a baby's presence in the cabin; the real wealth and
+advantage would be a glowing satisfaction in the baby. At any rate,
+Pattie Batch wanted one: she always had--and she simply couldn't help
+it. Babies, however, were not numerous at Swamp's End; in point of fact,
+there was only one--a perfectly adorable infant, it must be understood,
+a suitable child, and worthy, in every respect, of being heartily
+desired by any woman--which unhappily belonged to the bartender who
+lived with Pale Peter of the Red Elephant saloon. No use asking for
+_that_ baby! Not outright. It could be borrowed, however. Pattie Batch
+_had_ borrowed it; she had borrowed it frequently, of late, and had
+mysteriously measured it with a calculating eye, and had estimated, and
+scowled in doubt, and scratched her head, and pursed her sweet red lips,
+and had secretly spanned the baby, from chin to toe and across the back,
+with an industriously inquiring thumb and little finger. But a borrowed
+baby, it seems, is of no use whatsoever; the satisfaction is said to be
+temporary--nothing more--and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a
+stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie Batch wanted was a baby to
+_keep_--a baby she could call her own and cherish against meddling--a
+baby that should be so rosy and fat and curly, so neat and white, so
+scrubbed and highly polished from crown to toe-nails, that every mother
+in the land, beholding, would promptly expire on the spot of amazement,
+incredulity and sheer jealousy.
+
+There were babies at Elegant Corners--a frowzy, listless mud-hole of the
+woods, near by. They were all possessed by one mother, too. The last
+comer had appeared in the fall of the year; and Pattie Batch--when the
+great news came down to Swamp's End--had instantly taken the trail for
+Elegant Corners.
+
+"Got another, eh?" says she, flatly, to the wretched Mrs. Limp.
+
+"Uh-huh!" Mrs. Limp sighed and rolled her eyes, as though, God save us!
+the ultimate misfortune had fallen upon her. "Number eight," she
+groaned.
+
+"Don't you _like_ it?" Pattie demanded, hopefully.
+
+Mrs. Limp was so deeply submerged in tears that she failed to commit
+herself.
+
+"You _don't_ like it, eh?" Pattie pursued, hope immediately abounding.
+
+Mrs. Limp sniffed.
+
+"Well," said Pattie, her little heart all in a flutter--she was
+afflicted, too, with an adorable lisp in excitement--"I th'pothe I
+_ought_ t' be _thorry_."
+
+Mrs. Limp seemed dolefully to agree.
+
+Pattie Batch came then straight to the point. "I been thavin' up," said
+she. "I been hard at it for more 'n theven monthth."
+
+Mrs. Limp lifted her blue eyelids.
+
+"Yep," said Pattie, briskly; "an' I got thirty-four twenty-three right
+here in my thkirt. _Where'th that baby?_"
+
+The baby was fetched and deposited in her arms.
+
+"Boy or girl?" Pattie inquired, with business-like precision.
+
+"Boy," Mrs. Limp sighed, "thank God!"
+
+Pattie Batch was vastly disappointed. She had fancied a girl. It was a
+shock, indeed, to her ardour. It was so much of a shocking
+disappointment that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy--a _boy_!
+Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a
+boy--this boy, in fact, cleaned up--Pattie Batch was all the time
+running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes--yes, the
+child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and water might
+astonishingly improve--and, in fine, this little boy might--
+
+"Mithuth Limp," said Pattie, looking that lady straight in the eye,
+"I'll give you twenty-five dollarth for thith here baby. By George, I
+will!"
+
+The astonished mother jumped out of her chair and her lassitude at the
+same instant.
+
+"Not another thent!" Pattie craftily declared. "Here--take your baby."
+
+Mrs. Limp did not quite _take_ the baby. That would be but a pale
+indication of the speed, directness and outraged determination with
+which she acted. She snatched the baby away, with the precision of a
+brisk woodpecker after an escaping worm; and she hugged it until it
+howled for mercy--and she hushed it--and she crooned endearment--and she
+kissed the baby with such fervour and persistency that she saved its
+puckered face a washing. And then she turned--in a rage of
+indignation--in a storm of scorn--in a whirlwind of execration--upon
+poor little Pattie Batch. But Pattie Batch was gone. Discreet little
+Pattie Batch didn't need to be _told_! Her little feet were already
+pattering over the trail to Swamp's End; and she was crying as she ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Pattie Batch's wish for a baby went back to the very beginnings of
+things. Ask Gingerbread Jenkins. Gingerbread Jenkins knows. It was
+Gingerbread Jenkins who had found her, long ago--Pattie was little more
+than a baby herself, then--on the Bottle River Trail; and to Gingerbread
+Jenkins' astonishment the child was lugging a gun into the woods.
+
+"Where _you_ goin'?" says Gingerbread Jenkins.
+
+"Gunnin'."
+
+"Gunnin', eh? What for?"
+
+"Jutht gunnin'."
+
+"But what you gunnin' _for_?"
+
+"None o' your bithneth," says saucy little Pattie Batch.
+
+"It _is_ my business," Gingerbread Jenkins declared; "an' if you don't
+tell me what you're gunnin' for I'll have you home in a jiffy."
+
+"Well," says Pattie, "I'm--gunnin'."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Storks," says Pattie.
+
+"Goin' t' _kill_ 'em?" Gingerbread inquired.
+
+"No," says Pattie.
+
+"What's your gun for?"
+
+"I'm goin' t' wing a couple," says Pattie, "an' tame 'em."
+
+That was Pattie Batch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_A GIFT NEGLECTED_
+
+
+Well, well! there was only one baby at Swamp's End; and that baby Pattie
+Batch had adopted. In her mind, of course: _quite_ on the sly. Nobody
+could adopt Pale Peter's bartender's baby in any other way. And here was
+Christmas come again! Day gone beyond the last waving pines in a cold
+flush of red and gold: Christmas Eve here at last. Pattie Batch's soft
+arms were still wanting; there were a thousand kisses waiting on her
+tender lips for giving; her voice was all attuned to crooning sweetest
+lullabys; but her heart was empty--save for a child of mist and wishes.
+It was dark, now; but though the wind was still rollicking down there
+was no snow blowing, and the shy stars were winking wide-eyed upon the
+busy world and all the myriad mysteries it exhibited out-of-doors. The
+gift of silk and fawn-skin was finished. A perfect gift: fashioned and
+accomplished with all the dexterity Pattie Batch could employ. "Just as
+if," she had determined, "it was for my _own_ baby." And Pattie
+Batch--after an agitated glance at the clock--quickly shoed and cloaked
+and hooded her sweet and blooming little self; and she listened to the
+lusty wind, and she put a most adorable little nose out-of-doors to
+sense the frosty weather, and she fluttered about the warm room in
+search of her mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log
+in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having
+made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast
+and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind,
+the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with
+herself, too, and with the blessed Night of the year.
+
+She was exceedingly cautious; and she was not observed--not for the
+smallest flash. The thing was accomplished in mystery. Before she was
+aware of it--before her heart had eased its agitation--she was safely
+out again; and there, in plain view, on the table, in Pale Peter's
+living-room behind the saloon, lay the gift of silk and fawn-skin for
+Pale Peter's bartender's baby--a Christmas mystery for them all to solve
+as best they could.
+
+Pattie Batch peeked in at the window.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "if they'll _ever_--if they'll _ever in the
+world_--find out I done it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently Pale Peter's bartender came in. This was Charlie the Infidel.
+Pattie Batch rose on her cold little toes the better to observe. The
+frost exploded like pistol shots under her feet. She started. Really,
+the little mite began to feel--and rather exquisitely--like a thief in
+the night. There was another explosion of frost as she crept nearer her
+peek-hole in the glowing window. Whew! How deliciously mysterious it
+was! Nothing much, however, happened in Pale Peter's living-room to
+continue the thrill. Charlie the Infidel, in haste, chanced to brush the
+fawn-skin cloak off the table. He paused impatiently to pick it up, and
+to fling it back in a heap: whereupon he pressed on to the bar. _That_
+wasn't very thrilling, you may be sure; but Charlie the Infidel, after
+all, was only a father, and Pattie Batch, her courage not at all
+diminished, still waited in the frosty shadow, quite absorbed in
+expectation. Entered, then, Mrs. Bartender--a blonde, bored,
+novel-reading little lady in splendid array. First of all, as Pattie
+Batch observed, she yawned; secondly, she yawned again. And she was
+about to attempt the extraordinary feat of yawning a third time--and
+doubtless would have achieved it--when her washed blue eyes chanced to
+fall on the fawn-skin coat, with its lining of golden-brown silk
+shimmering in the lamplight. She picked it up, of course, in a bored
+sort of way; and she was positively on the very verge of being
+interested in it when--would you believe it?--she attacked the third
+yawn--or the third yawn attacked her--and however it was, the yawn was
+accomplished with such dexterity, such certainty, and with such
+satisfaction to the lady, that she quite forgot to look at the fawn-skin
+cloak again.
+
+"By George, she's tired!" Pattie Batch exclaimed to herself.
+
+Pattie Batch sighed: she sighed twice, in point of fact--the second
+sigh, a great, long one, discovering itself somewhere very deep
+within--and then she went home disconsolate.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_THE MAKING OF A MAN_
+
+
+Soon after dark, John Fairmeadow, with a pack on his broad back, swung
+from the Jumping Jimmy trail into the clearing of Swamp's End, ceasing
+only then his high, vibrant song, and came striding down the huddled
+street, a big man in rare humour with life, labour and the night. A
+shadow--not John Fairmeadow's shadow--was in cautious pursuit; but of
+this dark, secret follower John Fairmeadow was not aware. Near the Cafe
+of Egyptian Delights he stumbled. The pursuing Shadow gasped; and John
+Fairmeadow was so mightily exercised for his pack that he ejaculated in
+a fashion most unministerial, but recovered his footing with a jerk, and
+doubtless near turned pale with apprehension. But the pack was safe--the
+delicate contents, whatever they were, quite undisturbed. John
+Fairmeadow gently adjusted the pack, stamped the snow from his soles, as
+a precautionary measure, wiped the frost from his brows and eyelids, in
+the same cautious wisdom, and, still followed by the Shadow, strode on,
+but with infinitely more care. At the Red Elephant--Pale Peter's glowing
+saloon--he turned in. The bar, as always, in these days, gave the young
+apostle to those unrighteous parts a roaring welcome. It was become the
+fashion: big, bubbling, rosy John Fairmeadow, with the square jaw, the
+frank, admonitory tongue, the tender and persuasive heart, the
+competent, not unwilling fists, was welcome everywhere, from the Bottle
+River camps and the Cant-hook cutting to the bunk-houses of the Yellow
+Tail, from beyond the Divide to the lower waters of the Big River, in
+every saloon, bunk-house, superintendent's office and cook's quarters of
+his wide green parish--welcome to preach and to pray, to bury, marry,
+gossip and scold, and, upon goodly provocation, to fight, all to the
+same righteous end. A clean man: a big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
+long-legged body, with a soul to match it--a glowing heart and a purpose
+lifted high. There was no mistaking the man by men.
+
+John Fairmeadow, clad like a lumber-jack, upright, now, in the full
+stature of a man, body and soul, grinned like a delighted schoolboy. His
+fine head was thrown back, in the pride of clean, sure strength; his
+broad face was in a rosy glow; his great chest still heaved with the
+labour of a stormy trail; his gray eyes flashed and twinkled in the soft
+light of Pale Peter's many lamps. Twinkled?--and with merriment?--in
+that long, stifling, roaring, smoky, fume-laden room? For a moment: then
+closed, a bit worn, and melancholy, too; but presently, with reviving
+faith to urge them, opened wide and heartily, and began to twinkle
+again. The bar was in festive array: Christmas greens, red berries,
+ribbons, tissue-paper and gleaming tinfoil--flash of mirrors, bright
+colour, branches of pine, cedar and spruce from the big balsamic woods.
+It was crowded with lumber-jacks--great fellows from the forest, big of
+body and passion, here gathered in celebration of the festival. John
+Fairmeadow, getting all at once and vigorously under way, shouted "Merry
+Christmas, boys!" and "Hello, Charlie!" to the bartender; and he shook
+hands with Pale Peter, slapped Billy the Beast on the back, roared a
+greeting to Gingerbread Jenkins, exclaimed "Merry Christmas!" with the
+speed and detonation of a Gatling gun, inquired after Butcher Long's
+brood of kids in the East, and cried "Hello, old man!" and "What's the
+good word from Yellow Tail?" and "How d'ye do?" and "Glad t' see you!"
+and everywhere shook hands and clapped backs--carefully preserving,
+however, his own back from being slapped--and devoutly ejaculated "God
+bless you, men! A Merry Christmas to you all and every one!" and
+eventually disappeared in the direction of Pale Peter's living-quarters,
+leaving an uproar of genial delight behind him.
+
+John Fairmeadow's Shadow, however, unable to enter the bar of the Red
+Elephant, waited in seclusion across the windy street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Bartender was still yawning as John Fairmeadow entered upon her
+_ennui_; but when the big minister, exercising the softest sort of
+caution, slipped off his gigantic pack, and deposited it with
+exquisitely delicate care, and a face of deep concern, on the table, she
+opened her faded eyes with interested curiosity. And as for the contents
+of the pack, there's no more concealing them! The article must now be
+declared and produced. It was a baby. Of course, it was a baby! The
+thing has been obvious all along. John Fairmeadow's foundling: left in a
+basket at the threshold of his temporary lodging-room at Big Rapids that
+very morning--first to John Fairmeadow's consternation, and then to his
+gleeful delight. As for the baby itself--it was presently unswathed--it
+is quite beyond me to describe its excellencies of appearance and
+conduct. John Fairmeadow himself couldn't make the attempt and escape
+annihilation. It was a real and regular baby, however. One might
+suggest, in inadequate description, that it was a plump baby; one might
+add that it was a lusty baby. It had hair; it had a pucker of amazement;
+its eyes, two of them, were properly disposed in its head; its hands
+were of what are called rose-leaf dimensions; it had, apparently, a
+fixed habit of squirming; it had no teeth. Evidently a healthy baby--a
+baby that any mother might be proud of--doubtless a marvel of infantile
+perfection in every respect. I should not venture to dispute such an
+assertion; nor would John Fairmeadow--nor any other bold gentleman of
+Swamp's End and Elegant Corners--_not in these later days_!
+
+Mrs. Bartender, of course, lifted her languid white hands in uttermost
+astonishment.
+
+"There!" John Fairmeadow exploded, looking round like a showman. "What
+d'ye think o' _that_? Eh?"
+
+"But, Mr. Fairmeadow," the poor lady stammered, "what have you brought
+it _here_ for?"
+
+"Why not?" John Fairmeadow demanded. "Why not, indeed? It's perfectly
+polite."
+
+"What am I to _do_ with it?"
+
+"It isn't intoxicated, my good woman," John Fairmeadow ran on, in great
+wrath; "and it's never been in jail."
+
+"But my _dear_ Mr. Fairmeadow, do be sensible; what am I to _do_ with
+it?"
+
+"Why, ah--I should think," John Fairmeadow ventured--the baby was still
+sleeping like a brick--"that you might first of all--ah--resuscitate it.
+Would a--a slight poke in the ribs--provoke animation?"
+
+But the baby didn't need a poke in the ribs. It didn't need any other
+sort of resuscitation. Not _that_ baby! The self-dependent, courageous,
+perfectly competent and winning little rascal resuscitated itself.
+Instantly, too--and positively--and apparently without the least effort
+in the world. Moreover--and with remarkable directness--it demanded what
+it wanted--and got it. And having been nourished to its satisfaction
+from young Master Bartender's silver-mounted bottle (which John
+Fairmeadow then secretly slipped into his pocket)--and having yawned in
+a fashion so tremendous that Mrs. Bartender herself could never hope to
+equal that infinite expression of boredom--and having smiled, and having
+wriggled, and having giggled, and cooed, and attempted--actually
+attempted--to get its great toe in its mouth without extraneous
+assistance of any sort whatsoever--even without the slightest suggestion
+that such a thing would be an amazingly engaging trick in a baby of its
+age and degree--it burst into a gurgle of glee so wondrously genuine and
+infectious that poor, bored Mrs. Bartender herself was quite unable to
+resist it, and promptly, and publicly, and finally committed herself to
+the assertion that the baby was a dear, wherever it came from.
+
+John Fairmeadow snatched it from the table, and was about to make off
+with it, when Mrs. Bartender interposed.
+
+"My _dear_ Mr. Fairmeadow," said she, "that child will simply catch its
+_death_ of cold!"
+
+There was something handy, however--something of silk and fawn-skin--and
+with this enveloping the baby John Fairmeadow swung in a roar with it to
+the bar--and held it aloft in all that seething wickedness--pure symbol
+of the blessed Christmas festival. And there was a sensation, of
+course--a sensation beginning in vociferous ejaculations, but presently
+failing to a buzz of conjecture. There were questions to follow: to
+which John Fairmeadow answered that he had found the baby--that the baby
+was nobody's baby--that the baby was his baby by right of finders
+keepers--that the baby was everybody's baby--and that the baby would
+presently be somebody's much-loved baby, _that_ he'd vouch for! The
+baby, now resting content in John Fairmeadow's arms, was diffidently
+approached and examined. Gingerbread Jenkins poked a finger at it, and
+said, in a voice of the most inimical description, "Get out!" without
+disturbing the baby's serene equanimity in the slightest. Young Billy
+Lush, charging his soft, boyish voice with all the horrifying intent he
+could muster, threatened to "catch" the baby, as though bent upon
+devouring it on the spot; but the baby only chuckled with delight. Billy
+the Beast incautiously approached a finger near the baby's stout
+abdomen; and the baby--with a perfectly fearless glance into the very
+depths of the Beast's frowzy beard--clutched the finger and smiled like
+an angel. Long Butcher Long attempted to tweak the baby's nose; but the
+effort was a ridiculous failure, practiced so clumsily on an object so
+small, and the only effect was to cause the baby to achieve a tremendous
+wriggle and a loud scream of laughter. These experiments were variously
+repeated, but all with the same cherubic result; the baby conducted
+itself with admirable self-possession and courage, as though, indeed, it
+had been used, every hour of its life, to the company of riotous
+lumber-jacks in town.
+
+The inevitable happened, of course: Billy the Beast, whose pocket was
+smoking with his wages, proposed the baby's health, and there was an
+uproarious rush for the bar.
+
+"Just a minute, boys!" John Fairmeadow drawled.
+
+It was an awkward moment: but the jacks were by this time used to being
+bidden by this man who was a man, and the rush was forthwith halted.
+
+"Just a minute, boys," John Fairmeadow repeated, "for your minister!"
+
+The baby was then held aloft in John Fairmeadow's big, kind, sensitive
+hands, and from this safe perch softly smiled upon the crowd of flushed
+and bearded faces all roundabout.
+
+"Boys," John Fairmeadow drawled, significantly, "this is the only sort
+of church we have in these woods."
+
+There was a laughing stir and shuffling: but presently a tolerant
+silence fell, in obedience to the custom John Fairmeadow had
+established; and caps came off, and pipes were smothered.
+
+"A little away from the bar, please," the big preacher suggested.
+
+Pale Peter nodded to Charlie the Infidel; and the clink of glasses
+ceased--and the bottles were left in peace--and the hands of the
+bartender rested.
+
+"Now, boys," said John Fairmeadow, letting the foundling fall softly
+into his arms, "I'm not going to preach to you to-night, though God
+knows you need it! I'm just going to pray for the baby. _Dear Father of
+us wilful Children of the Vale_," he began, at once, lifting a placid,
+believing face above the smiling child in his arms, "_we ask Thy
+guardianship of this child. In us is no perfect counsel for him nor any
+help whatsoever that he may surely apprehend. In Thine acceptable wisdom
+Thou settest Thy little ones in a world where presently only Thou canst
+teach them: teach Thou then this little one. Thou alone knowest the
+right path for a little boy's inquiring feet: lead then this little boy.
+Thou alone art saving helper to an adventuring lad: help then this lad.
+Thou alone art all-perceiving and persuasive, alone art Truth Teller to
+a bewildered youth and Good Example in his wondering sight: be then Good
+Example and Teller of Truth to this youth. Thou alone art in the
+fashioning ways of Thine own world a Maker of Men: make then of this
+little child a Man. We ask no easy path for him--no unmanly way--no
+indulgent tempering of the winds. We pray for no riches--for no great
+deeds of his doing--for no ease at all nor any satisfaction. We ask of
+Thee in his behalf good Manhood. Lead him where true men must go: lead
+him where they learn the all of life; lead him where they level down and
+build again; lead him where in righteous strength his hands may lift the
+fallen; lead him where in anger he may strike; lead him where his tears
+may fall; lead him where his heart may find a pure desire. O Almighty
+God, Lover of children, Father of us all alike, make of this child, in
+the measure of his service and in the stature of his soul, a Man.
+Amen._"
+
+Amen, indeed!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+_CHRISTMAS EVE AT SWAMP'S END_
+
+
+As for poor little Pattie Batch, all this while, she sat alone, a
+doleful heart, in the shack at the edge of the big, black woods, quite
+unaware of the momentous advent of a Christmas baby at Swamp's End. The
+Christmas wind was still high, still shaking the cabin, still rattling
+the door, still howling like a wild beast in the night, still roaring in
+the red stove; and snow was falling again--a dry dust of snow which
+veiled the wondering stars. It was no longer a jolly, rollicking
+Christmas wind. The gale, now, it seemed, was become inimical to the
+lonely child: wild, vaunting, merciless, terrible with cold. Pattie
+Batch, disconsolate, sighed more often than a tender heart could bear to
+sanction in a child, and found swift visions in the glowing coals,
+though no enlivening tableaux; but--dear brave and human little
+one!--she presently ejaculated "Shoot it, anyhow!" and began at once to
+cheer up. And she was comfortably toasting her shins, in a placid
+delusion of stormy, mile-wide privacy, her mother's old-fashioned long
+black skirt drawn up from her dainty toes (of which, of course, the
+imminent John Fairmeadow was never permitted to be aware), when, all at
+once, and clamouring above the old wind's howling, there was a
+tremendous knocking at the door--a knocking so loud, and commanding, and
+prolonged, that Pattie Batch jumped like a fawn in alarm, and stood for
+a moment with palpitating heart and a mighty inclination to fly to the
+bedroom and lock herself in. Presently, however, she mustered courage to
+call "Come in!" in a sufficient tone: whereupon, the door was
+immediately flung wide, and big John Fairmeadow, with a wild, dusty
+blast of the gale, strode in with a gigantic basket, and slammed the
+door behind him, leaving the shivering, tenacious Shadow, which had
+secretly followed from Swamp's End, to keep cold vigil outside.
+
+"Hello, there, Pattie Batch!" John Fairmeadow roared. "Merry Christmas!"
+
+Pattie Batch stared.
+
+"Hello, I say!" John Fairmeadow cried, again. "Merry Christmas, ye
+rascal!"
+
+Pattie Batch, gulping her delight, and quite incapable of uttering a
+word, because of it, flew to the kitchen, instead of to the bedroom, and
+returned with a broom, with which, while the Shadow peeked in at the
+window, she brushed, and scraped, and slapped John Fairmeadow so
+vigorously that John Fairmeadow scampered into a corner and stood at
+bay.
+
+"Look out, there, Polly Pry!" he shouted, in a rage; "don't you _dare_
+look at my basket."
+
+Pattie Batch had been doing nothing of the sort.
+
+"Don't you so much as _squint_ at my basket," John Fairmeadow growled.
+
+Pattie Batch instantly _did_, of course--and with her eyes wide and
+sparkling, too. It was really something more than a squint.
+
+"Keep your eyes off that basket, Miss Pry!" John Fairmeadow commanded,
+again. "Huh!" he complained, emerging from his refuge and throwing his
+mackinaw and cap on the floor; "anybody'd think there was something in
+that basket for _you_."
+
+"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy.
+
+"Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!"
+
+Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat--and
+she stood on tiptoe--and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head
+away--(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing
+eyes!)--and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching
+conglomeration of hope, amusement, curiosity and adoring childish
+affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better
+of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know _you_, Mithter Fairmeadow."
+
+John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.
+
+"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific
+fright.
+
+"Nonsense!" John Fairmeadow declared; "it hasn't a tooth in its head."
+He added, with one eye closed, and palms lifted: "But--aha!--just you
+wait and _see_."
+
+"Well," Pattie Batch drawled, "I th'pose it'th a turkey. It'th
+thertainly _thome_thin' t' eat," she declared.
+
+"Good _enough_ to eat, I bet you!" John Fairmeadow agreed, with the air
+of having concealed in that veritable big basket the sweetest morsel in
+all the world.
+
+"Ith it a chicken?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said John Fairmeadow; "it's fa-a-a-ar more delicious than
+chicken. Hi, there, Poll Pry!" he roared, and just in time; "keep your
+hands off."
+
+"Is it anything for the house?"
+
+"No, indeed; the house is for _it_."
+
+Pattie Batch scowled in perplexity.
+
+"The back yard, too," John Fairmeadow added; "and don't you forget that
+this whole place--and all the world--belongs to just what's in that
+basket."
+
+"I'm sure," poor Pattie Batch mused, scratching her curls in
+bewilderment, "I can't guess what it _could_ be."
+
+Both were now staring at the basket; and at that very moment the blanket
+covering--_stirred_!
+
+"Ith a dog!" Pattie Batch exclaimed.
+
+"Dog!" the outraged John Fairmeadow roared. "Nothing of the sort! No
+_ma'am_!"
+
+Pattie Batch clasped her hands. "It ith, too!" she cried. "I thaw it
+move."
+
+"It is _not_!"
+
+"Ith a kitten, then."
+
+"It is _not_ a kitten!"
+
+Thereupon--while the Shadow, by whom John Fairmeadow had been dogged
+that night, now peered with acute attention through a break in the frost
+on the window-pane--thereupon, without any warning save a second slight
+movement of the blanket, a sound--and not by any means a growl--the
+thing was certainly not a dog--a sound proceeded from the depths of the
+basket.
+
+Pattie Batch jumped away.
+
+"Well, well!" cried John Fairmeadow; "what's the row?"
+
+Row, indeed! Pattie Batch was gone white; and she swayed a little, and
+shivered, too, and clenched her little hands to restrain her amazing
+hope. "Oh," she moaned, at last, far short of breath enough, "tell me
+quick: ith it--ith it a--a----"
+
+John Fairmeadow threw back the blanket in a most dramatic fashion; and
+there, wrapped in the neglected fawn-skin cloak, all dimpled and
+smiling, lay--
+
+THE BABY!
+
+"By George!" screamed Pattie Batch; "it _ith_ a baby!"
+
+"Your baby," John Fairmeadow whispered. "God's Christmas gift--to you."
+
+Pattie Batch--adorable, young mother!--reverently approached, and,
+bending with parted lips, eyes shining, and hands laid upon her
+trembling heart, for the first time gazed content upon the little face.
+She lifted, then--and with what awe and tenderness!--the tiny mortal
+from the warm basket, and pressed it, with knowing arms, against her
+warmer, softer young breast. "My baby!" she crooned, her lips close to
+its ear; "my little baby--my own little baby!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Christmas Eve at Swamp's End, by Norman Duncan
+
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