"I want her!" said poor little David. "I want Katy! I want Katy!" Presently David left the road, and climbing over the worm fence into the woodland, struck off diagonally among the trees. Still far above him, at the summit of the little mountain, there was a rough pile of rocks which formed a tiny cairn or cave. Before it was a small platform, parapeted by a great boulder. Generations past had named the spot, without any apparent reason, the "Sheep Stable." It was a favorite resort of David Hartman. Here, in secret, far above Millerstown, he carried on the wicked practices which he had meant to confess to his mother. From the little plateau one could look for miles and miles over a wide, rich, beautiful plain, could see the church spires of a dozen villages, the smoke curling upward from three or four great blast furnaces, set in the midst of wide fields, and could look far beyond the range of hills which bounded the view of William Koehler on his lower level, to another range. The Pennsylvania German made his home only in fertile spots. When other settlers passed the thickly forested lands because of the great labor of felling the trees and preparing the soil, he selected the sections bearing the tallest trees and had as his own the fertile land forever. David did not look out over the wide, pure expanse upon which a few flakes were still falling and beyond which the sun would soon sink gorgeously, nor did he see the purple shadows under the pine trees, nor observe the glancing motions of a squirrel, watching him from a bough near by. He determined, desperately, firmly, that he would repent no more; he would now return to his evil ways and get from them what satisfaction he could. He crept on hands and knees into the little cave and felt round under a mass of dried leaves until his hands encountered the instruments of his evil practices. Then David drew them forth, a stubby pipe, which he had smoked once and which had made him deathly ill, and a pack of cards, about whose mysterious and delightful use he knew nothing. He sat with them in his hands on the sloping rock, wishing, poor little David, that he knew how to be wickeder than he was! Having fed his stock, John Hartman tramped for a little while round his fields in the snow, then he returned to the kitchen and sat down by the window with a newspaper. Cassie lay asleep on the settle. Custom forbade her working on Christmas Day, and she never read, even the almanac. At her, her husband looked once or twice inscrutably, then he laid his head on the back of his tall chair and slept also. It was a scene at which Katy Gaumer would have pointed as proof of the unutterable stupidity of Millerstown.