



Produced by Al Haines










[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece: John Norton]





HOW

JOHN NORTON THE TRAPPER

KEPT HIS CHRISTMAS



BY

W. H. H. MURRAY




BOSTON:

DE WOLFE, FISKE & CO.

364 AND 365 WASHINGTON STREET.




COPYRIGHT, 1890,

BY DE WOLFE, FISKE & CO.




HOW JOHN NORTON THE TRAPPER
  KEPT HIS CHRISTMAS.




I.

A cabin.  A cabin in the woods.  In the cabin a great fireplace piled
high with logs, fiercely ablaze.  On either side of the broad
hearth-stone a hound sat on his haunches, looking gravely, as only a
hound in a meditative mood can, into the glowing fire.  In the centre
of the cabin, whose every nook and corner was bright with the ruddy
firelight, stood a wooden table, strongly built and solid.  At the
table sat John Norton, poring over a book,--a book large of size, with
wooden covers bound in leather, brown with age, and smooth as with the
handling of many generations.  The whitened head of the old man was
bowed over the broad page, on which one hand rested, with the
forefinger marking the sentence.  A cabin in the woods filled with
firelight, a table, a book, an old man studying the book.  This was the
scene on Christmas Eve.  Outside, the earth was white with snow, and in
the blue sky above the snow was the white moon.

"It says here," said the Trapper, speaking to himself, "it says here,
'Give to him that lacketh, and from him that hath not, withhold not
thine hand.'  It be a good sayin' fur sartin; and the world would be a
good deal better off, as I conceit, ef the folks follered the sayin' a
leetle more closely."  And here the old man paused a moment, and, with
his hand still resting on the page, and his forefinger still pointing
at the sentence, seemed pondering what he had been reading.  At last he
broke the silence again, saying,--

"Yis, the world would be a good deal better off, ef the folks in it
follered the sayin';" and then he added, "There's another spot