"Hey, king and country!" said Ellen's old father, whittling a stick, "I ain't done no more'n look on at a Christmas for ten years and more--with no children around so." "I know," said Ellen Bourne, "I know...." The announcement was greeted by Mortimer Bates with a slap of the knee. "Good-by, folderol!" he said. "We need a sane Christmas in the world a good sight more'n we need a sane Fourth, most places. Good work." But Bennet and Gussie Bates burst into wails. "Hush!" said Mis' Bates, peremptorily. "You ain't the only ones, remember. It's no Christmas for nobody!" "I thought the rest of 'em would have one an' we could go over to theirs...." sobbed Gussie. "I'd rather p'etend it's Christmas in other houses even if we ain't it!" mourned Bennet. "Be my little man and woman," admonished Mis' Mortimer Bates. At the Morans, little Emily Moran made an unexpected deduction:-- "I _won't_ stay in bed all day Christmas!" she gave out. "Stay in bed!" echoed Mis' Moran. "Why on this earth should you stay in bed?" "Well, if we get up, then it's Christmas and you can't stop it!" little Emily triumphed. When they told Pep, the minister's son, after a long preparation by story and other gradual approach, and a Socratic questioning cleverly winning damning admissions from Pep, he looked up in his father's face thoughtfully:-- "If they ain't no Christ's birthday this year, is it a lie that Christ was born?" he demanded. And secretly the children took counsel with one another: Would Buff Miles, the church choir tenor, take them out after dark on Christmas Eve, to sing church choir serenades at folks' gates, or would he not? And when they thought that he might not, because this would be considered Christmas celebration and would only make the absence of present-giving the more conspicuous, as in the case of the Sunday schools themselves, they faced still another theological quandary: For if it was true that Christ was born, then Christmas was his birthday; and if Christmas was his birthday, wasn't it wicked not to pay any attention? Alone of them all, little Tab Winslow rejoiced. His brothers and sisters made the time tearful with questionings as to the effect on Santa Claus, and how would they get word to him, and would it be Christmas in the City, and why couldn't they move there, and other matters denoting the reversal of this their earth. But Tab slipped out the kitchen door, to the corner of the barn, where the great turkey gobbler who had been named held his empire trustingly. "Oh, Theophilus Thistledown," said Tab to him, "you're the only one in this town that's goin' to have a Christmas. You ain't got to be et." IV The placard was tacked to the Old Trail Town post-office wall, between a summons to join the Army and the Navy of the United States, and the reward offered for an escaped convict--all three manifestoes registering something of the stage of society's development. NOTICE