Earl's words gained authority by coming from himself. Jenny had always regarded him with awe and admiration. It was much that he should speak at all to her.

Earl Munroe was quite the king of this little district school. He was the son of the wealthiest man in town. No other boy was so well dressed, so gently bred, so luxuriously lodged and fed. Earl himself realized his importance, and had at times the loftiness of a young prince in his manner. Occasionally, some independent urchin would bristle with democratic spirit, and tell him to his. face that he was "stuck up," and he had n't so much more to be proud of than other folks; that his grandfather was n't anything but an old ragman! Then Earl would wilt. Arrogance in a free country is likely to have an unstable foundation. Earl's tottered at the mention of his paternal grandfather, who had given the first impetus to the family fortune by driving a tin-cart about the country. Moreover, the boy was really pleasant and generous-hearted, and had no mind, in the long run, for lonely state and disagreeable haughtiness. He enjoyed being lordly once in a while, that was all.

He did now, with Jenny-he eyed her with a gay condescension, which would have greatly amused his tin-peddler grandfather.

one before Christmas. It was pleasant, and not very cold. Everybody was out; the little village stores were crowded; sleds trailing Christmasgreens went flying, people were hastening with parcels under their arms, their hands full.

Jenny Brown also was out. She was climbing Franklin Mountain. The snowy pine-boughs bent so low that they brushed her head; she stepped deeply into the untrodden snow, the train of her green polonaise dipped into it, and swept it along. And all the time she was peering through those white fairy columns and arches for- a Christmas

tree.

After school was done that night, Earl stood in the door when Jenny passed out.

"Say, Jenny," he called, "when are you going over on the mountain to find the Christmas-tree? You'd better go pretty soon, or they 'll be gone.” "That's so!" chimed in one of the girls. "You'd better go right off, Jenny."

She passed along, her face shyly dimpling with her little innocent smile, and said nothing. She would never talk much.

She had quite a long walk to her home. Presently, as she was pushing weakly through the new snow, Earl went flying past her in his father's sleigh, with the black horses and the fur-capped coachman. He never thought of asking her to ride. If he had, he would not have hesitated a second before doing so.

Jenny, as she waded along, could see the mountain always before her. This road led straight to it, then turned and wound around its base. It had stopped snowing, and the sun was setting clear. The great white mountain was all rosy. It stood opposite the red western sky. Jenny kept her eyes fixed upon the mountain. Down in the valleyshadows, her little simple face, pale and colorless, gathered another kind of radiance.

There was no school the next day, which was the

Munroe looked with a pale face around her silver tea-urn, and Earl sat as if frozen. He heard his father's soothing questions, and the mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned, Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes' that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew.

Earl sat there, and saw his mother draw the poor woman into the room and try to comfort her; he heard, with a vague understanding, his father order the horses to be harnessed immediately; he watched him putting on his coat and hat out in the hall.

When he heard the horses trot up the drive, he sprung to his feet. When Mr. Munroe opened the door, Earl, with his coat and cap on, was at his heels.

"Why, you can't go, Earl!" said his father, when he saw him. "Go back at once."

Earl was white and trembling. He half sobbed. "Oh, Father, I must go!" said he.

"Earl, be reasonable. You want to help, don't you, and not hinder?" his mother called out of the dining-room.

Earl caught hold of his father's coat. "Father -look here - I — I believe I know where she is!" Then his father faced sharply around, his mother

Just at that moment Earl Munroe was hurrying down the road, and he was dragging his big sled, on which were loaded his Christmaspresents and the Christmas-tree. The top of the tree trailed in the snow, its branches spread over the sled on either side, and rustled. It was a heavy load, but Earl tugged manfully in an enthusiasm of remorse and atonement,- a fantastic, extravagant atonement, planned by that same fertile fancy which had invented that story for poor little Jenny, but instigated by all the good, repentant impulses in the boy's

nature.

On every one of those neat parcels, above his own name, was written in his big, crooked, childish hand, "Jenny Brown, from-" Earl Munroe had not saved one Christmas-present for himself.

Pulling along, his cheeks brilliant, his eyes glowing, he met Maud Barker. She was Judge Barker's daughter, and the girl who had joined him in advising Jenny to hunt on the mountain for the Christmas-tree.

Maud stepped along, placing her trim little feet with dainty precision; she wore some new high-buttoned over-shoes. She also carried a new beaver muff, but in one hand only. The other dangled mittenless at her side; it was pink with cold, but on its third finger sparkled a new gold ring with a blue stone in it.

"Oh, Earl!" she called out, "have they found Jenny Brown? I was going up to your house to- Why, Earl Munroe, what have you got there?"

"I rather think they belong to her, more 'n they do to me, after what 's happened."

"Does your mother know?"

"No; she would n't care. She 'd think I was only doing what I ought."

"All of 'em?" queried Maud, feebly.
"You don't s'pose I 'd keep any back?"

Maud stood staring. It was beyond her little philosophy. Earl was passing on, when a thought struck him.

"Say, Maud," he cried eagerly, "have n't you something you can put in? Girls' things might please her better, you know. Some of mine are rather queer, I'm afraid." "What have you got?" demanded Maud.

"Well, some of the things are well enough. There's a lot of candy and oranges and figs and books; there's one by Jules Verne I guess she '11 like; but there's a great

Of course it would have been pleasanter to have had enough to eat occasionally; but then we could scarcely remember the time when our single pone of corn-bread had not been cut into three as equal parts as though it were to illustrate an example in simple fractions, one for each of us, Mother, Bruce, and me. And though some appetite might be left over, cornbread never was.

This was the time during the war when Confederate money had become so worthless that, as some one remarked, "you went to market with your money in a wheelbarrow, and brought some provisions back in your pocket-book." However, as we had little money and less market up here in the Blue Ridge mountains, we were saved this harrowing experience. In fact, Bruce and I had no harrowing experiences. We scampered about from morning until night on our tireless bare legs, always hungry,- which enabled us to relish not only our meals, but any articles of an eatable nature that fell into our hands.

There was a tradition in the family that we once had white loaf-sugar every day of our lives; and I could distinctly remember the time when sorghum, or "long sweetening," its army name,was an every-day affair. All this, however, in the spring of 1865, was a thing of the past only a sweet memory. Our sorghum was so low in the barrel, that, when mother turned the spigot, only the faintest line of black syrup responded and dripped slowly, reluctantly, into the little brown jug beneath.

It amuses me to look back on my old self as I was in those days, and I think what an odd figure I must have been in my clothes of strictly home manufacure. My dress of homespun cotton had been woven by an old negro woman on our place; it was buttoned up behind, when buttoned at all, by a row of persimmon-seeds with holes drilled in them for eyelets. I had a hat (which at that time I conceived to be very beautiful) of plaited corn-shucks, just the shape of a rather deep bowl. The shape, however, was a matter of the smallest consequence, as it hung down my back by means of a leathern shoestring, except when mother was pleading with me about my complexion. My very short, very light hair hung in a frayed plait, down my back.

Bruce's costume was, if anything, simpler than mine, It consisted of a shirt and trousers, made in one, of a piece of striped bed-ticking; a row of persimmon-seed buttons followed the curve of his spine, and a small cap knitted of carpet-ravelings adorned his jolly little head. We wore neither shoes nor stockings,- my last pair of shoes, worth two hundred dollars in Confederate money, had frizzled up from being left too near the kitchen fire.

The greatest excitement we had in those days was the coming of the daily trains. I felt that my day was very incomplete if by any chance I missed being on the platform when the great mountain engines came thundering up the heavy grade past our house, and stopped at the Blackwood Station, a few hundred yards above. Our interest was increased when the trains began to bring provisions and ammunition up from along the railroad, to be stored for safe-keeping in the freight depot. I did not know there were so many barrels of sorghum or so many bolts of cloth in the whole world as were packed into that depot. I think the buttons impressed me most. It was with a sense of bitterness and shame that I remembered the time when I had felt proud of my persimmonseeds. Then came barrels and barrels of gunpowder, and then bomb-shells. I was conscious of my bravery when I stood by, clutching my skirts with both hands, and saw these stores rolled up the inclined plane of logs into the depot. The men who brought the stores were mostly disabled Confederates, a gloomy, untalkative set; but one big