



Produced by David Edwards, Greg Bergquist and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://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
