CHAPTER I.

There was not a larger house in all the valley than Grandfather Vrooman's. It was old and comfortable, and seemed to lie sound asleep, with a snow blanket all over its roof.

Nothing short of a real old-fashioned Christmas could wake up such a house as that.

Christmas was coming!

Unless Santa Claus and the Simpsons and the Hopkinses should forget the day of the month, they would all be there at waking-up time to-morrow morning.

"Jane," said Grandmother Vrooman, that afternoon, to her daughter, Mrs. Hardy, who lived with her--"Jane, I've got 'em all fixed now just where they're going to sleep, and I've made up a bed on the floor in the store-room."

"Why, mother, who's that for?"

"You wait and see, after they get here, and we've counted 'em."

"Anyhow there's cookies enough, and doughnuts."

"And the pies, Jane."

"And I'm glad Liph gathered such piles of butternuts."

"Oh, mother," exclaimed little Sue, "I gathered as many as he did, and beech-nuts, and hickory-nuts, and--"

"So you did, Sue; but I wonder if two turkeys'll go round, with only one pair of chickens?"

"Mother," said Mrs. Hardy, "the plum-pudding?"

"Yes, but all those children! I do hope they'll get here to-night in time for me to know where I'm going to put 'em."

At that very minute, away up the north road, two miles nearer town, there was a sort of dot on the white road. If you were far enough away from it, it looked like a black dot, and did not seem to move. The nearer you came to it the funnier it looked, and the more it seemed to be trudging along with an immense amount of small energy. Very small indeed, for anybody close up to it would have seen that it was a five-year-old boy in a queer little suit of gray trimmed with red. He had on a warm gray cap, and right in the middle of the front of it were worked a pair of letters--"O. A."--but there was nobody with the gray dot to explain that those two letters stood for "Orphan Asylum." No, nor to tell how easy it was for a boy of five years old, with all the head under his gray cap full of Christmas ideas, to turn the wrong corner where the roads crossed south of the great Orphan Asylum building. That was what he had done, and he had walked on and on, wondering why the big building did not come in sight, until his small legs were getting tired, and his brave, bright little black eyes were all but ready for a crying spell.

Just as he got thoroughly discouraged he came to the edge of the woods, where there stood a wood sleigh with two horses in front of it, drawn close to the road-side, and heaped with great green boughs and branches.

"The sleigh's pretty nigh full, grandfather," sang out a clear boyish voice beyond the fence, and a very much older one seemed to go right on talking.

"Your grandmother, Liph, she always did make the best mince-pies, and she can stuff a turkey better'n any one I know."

"Grandfather, do you s'pose they'll all come?"

"Guess they will. That there spruce'll do for the Christmas tree. Your grandmother said we must fetch a big one."

"That's a whopper. But will Joe Simpson and Bob Hopkins be bigger'n they were last summer?"

"Guess they've grown a little. They'll grow this time, if they eat all their grandmother'll want 'em to. Hullo, Liph, who's that out there in the road?"

"Guess it's a boy."

"I declare if it isn't one of them little gray mites from the 'sylum! 'Way out here! I say, bub."

"I'm Bijah."

There was a scared look in the black eyes, for they had never seen anything quite like Grandfather Vrooman when he pushed his face out between the branches.

The trees all looked as if they had beards of snow, but none had a longer or whiter one than Liph's grandfather.

"Bijah," said he, "did you know Christmas was coming?"

"Be here to-morrow," piped the dot in gray, "and we're going to have turkey."

"You don't say! Just you wait until I cut a tree down, and I'll come out and hear all about it."

"Is your name Santa Claus?"

"Did you hear that, Liph? The little chap's miles from home, and I don't believe he knows it."

"Is that your sleigh?"

"Yes, Bijah, that's my sleigh."

"Those ain't reindeers, and you're bigger'n you used to be."

"Hear that, Liph?"

Bijah had not a doubt in the world but that he had discovered Santa Claus in the very act of getting ready for Christmas, and his black eyes were growing bigger every minute, until Liph began to climb over the fence. Then he set off on a run as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Hold on," shouted Liph. "We won't hurt you."

"Let him go," said Grandfather Vrooman. "He's on the road to our house. We'll pick him up."

"Where could we put him?"

"Took me for Santa Claus, I declare! Liph, this here tree'll just suit your grandmother."

It was a splendid young spruce-tree, with wide-reaching boughs at less than two feet from the snow level. Grandfather Vrooman worked his way carefully in until he could reach the trunk with saw and axe, and then there was a sharp bit of work for him and Liph to get that "Christmas tree" stowed safely on the top of the sleigh load.

"Now for home, Liph. Your grandmother'll cut into one of them new pies for you when you get there."

"Look!" shouted Liph, "that little fellow's waiting for us at the top of the hill."

The hill was not a high one, and the road led right over it, and there on the summit stood Bijah.

"I'm so tired and hungry," he said to himself, "and there comes old Santa Claus, sleigh and all."

He was getting colder, too, now he was standing still, and when Grandfather Vrooman came along the road, walking in front of the sleigh, while Liph perched among the evergreens and drove, there seemed to be something warm about him.

It was not so much his high fur hat, or his tremendous overcoat, or his long white beard, or the way he smiled, but something in the sound of his voice almost drove the frost out of Bijah's nose.

"Well, my little man, don't you want to come to my house and get some pie?"

"Yes, sir."

Bijah could not think of one other word he wanted to say, and he mustered all the courage he had not to cry when Grandfather Vrooman picked him up, as if he had been a kitten, and perched him by the side of Liph among the evergreens.

On he went, and Bijah did not answer a single one of Liph's questions for five long minutes. Then he turned his black eyes full on his driver, and asked, "Do you live with Santa Claus in his own house?"

"Yes, sir-ee," responded Liph, with a great chuckle of fun; but all he had to do the rest of the way home was to spin yarns for Bijah about the way they lived at the house where all the Christmas came from.

When they got there, Liph's father and the hired man and Grandfather Vrooman were ready to lift off that Christmas tree, and carry it through the front door and hall, and set it up in the "dark room" at the end of the hall. That ought to have been the nicest room in the house, for it was right in the middle, but there were no windows in it. There were doors in every direction, however, and in the centre of the ceiling was a "scuttle hole" more than two feet square, with a wooden lid on it.

"John," said Grandfather Vrooman to Mr. Hardy, "we'll hoist the top of the tree through the hole. You go up and open the scuttle. Hitch the top good and strong. There'll be lots of things to hang on them branches."

Liph's father hurried up stairs to open the scuttle, and that gave Grandfather Vrooman a chance to think of Bijah. "Where is he, Liph?"

"Oh, he's all right. Grandmother's got him. She and mother caught him before he got into the house. He tried to run away, too."

Bijah's short legs had been too tired to carry him very fast, and Grandmother Vrooman and Mrs. Hardy had caught him before he got back to the gate.

The way they laughed about it gave him a great deal of courage, and he never cried when they took him by his red little hands; one on each side, and walked him into the house.

"Jane," said grandmother, "what will we do with him? The house'll be choke, jam, packed full, and there isn't an extra bed."

"Father found him in the snow somewhere. Just like him. But what a rosy little dot he is!"

"Are you Santa Claus's wives?" asked Bijah, with a quiver of his lip in spite of himself.

How they did chuckle while they tried to answer that question! All they made clear to Bijah was that the place for him was in a big chair before the sitting-room fire-place, with a plate of mince-pie in his lap, and Bush, the big house-dog, sitting beside him.

"It's Santa Claus's dog," said Bijah to himself; "but his house isn't as big as the 'sylum."