At the squire's gate, Bevy Schnepp awaited her. "Ach, come once in a little, Katy!" "I cannot!" "Just a little! I have something for you." Bevy put out a futile arm. People were forever trying to catch Katy. "No," laughed Katy. "I'll put a hex on you, Bevy! I'll bewitch you, Bevy!" Katy was gone, through her grandfather's gate, down the brick walk under the pine trees to the kitchen where sat grandfather and grandmother and the squire. Seeing them together, the two old men with their broad shoulders and their handsome heads and the old woman with her kindly face, a stranger would have known at once where Katy got her active, erect figure and her curly hair and her dark eyes. All three were handsome; all three cultivated as far as their opportunities would allow; all three would have been distinguished in a broader circle than Millerstown could offer. But here circumstances had placed them and had kept them. Even the squire, whose desk was frequently littered with time-tables, and who planned constantly journeys to the uttermost parts of the earth, had scarcely ever been away from Millerstown. Upon these three Katy rushed like a whirlwind. "Is it true?" she demanded breathlessly in the Pennsylvania German which the older folk loved, but which was falling into disuse among the young. "Is what true?" asked grandfather and the squire together. They liked to tease Katy, everybody liked to tease Katy. "That my uncle the governor is coming?" "Yes," said Grandfather Gaumer. "Your uncle the governor is coming." CHAPTER II THE BELSNICKEL ON the afternoon of the entertainment there was an air of excitement, both within and without the schoolroom. Outside the clouds hung low; the winter wheat in the Weygandt fields seemed to have yielded up some of its brilliant green; there was no color on the mountain-side which had been warm brown and purple in the morning sunshine. A snowstorm was brewing, the first of the season, and Millerstown rejoiced, believing that a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard. But in spite of the threatening storm nearly all Millerstown moved toward the schoolhouse. The schoolroom was almost unrecognizable. The walls were naturally a dingy brown, except where the blackboards made them still duller; the desks were far apart; the distance from the last row, where the ill-behaved liked to sit, to the teacher's desk, to which they made frequent trips for punishment, seemed on ordinary days interminable. This afternoon, however, there was neither dullness nor extra space. The walls were hidden by masses of crowfoot and pine, brought from the mountain; the blackboards had vanished behind festoons of red flags and bunting. Into one quarter of the room the children were so closely crowded that one would have said they could never extricate themselves; into the other three quarters had squeezed and pressed their admiring relatives and friends.