"What,--you women aiming to lay in a store of liquor and do a lot of shooting?" he asked, with dawning hope. "Horrors, no!" I exclaimed. "Them's the good times I allus seed a-Christmas." "Me, too!" echoed the other eleven. "Didn't you ever hang up your stocking, or have a tree or get presents?" "Never heared tell of the like till I come here." "But it's the greatest possible fun," I insisted. "Fun enough for women, may be, but men,--gee!" "Gimme a big jug of moonshine!" shouted Joab. "And a galloping nag!" cried Nucky. "And a pistol in both hands!" added Killis. "Boys," I said, "is it possible you can be willing to spend the holy season of Christmas in drinking and shooting?" "Only way I ever heared of anybody spending it," said Philip; "everybody does it. If there's ary boy here," he added, "that haint been drunk, or tried to, every Christmas he can ricollect, hold up your hand!" Not a hand moved, till suddenly, as if by an afterthought, Killis's went up. "I weren't last Christmas," he said; "when paw got shot and lay a-dying, he told me never to drink another drap, and I haint toch it sence." "Mighty hard on you," remarked Joab; "I never pass a Christmas without being drunk,--paw he gen'ally fills me'n Iry up till we can't see single, and then makes us walk a crack in the floor, for fun." "I allus used to swill all I could hold, from New Christmas to Old Christmas," said Killis. "I drink all I want and then ride around on Blant's nag and shoot off my rifle," said Nucky. "When I were a five-year-old," contributed Geordie, "my uncles give me a pint of liquor, and then put a cocked pistol in my hand and p'inted it at Absalom, and told me to shoot. I fired away,--good thing I weren't sober, I'd a-kilt him sure!" "The neighbors up the branch they invites us to their house and treats us a-Christmas," said Hen; "but Keats he haint half a man,--I can drink twict as much as him!" "Self-brag is half-scandal," exclaimed Keats, angrily; "it's because I've had white swelling and typhoid I can't drink as much as you, you sorry little scald-pate!" "Paw and me got so drunk last Christmas we couldn't roll over in bed," piped up Jason. Taulbee, the great stickler for propriety, summed up the matter authoritatively: "Folks would think they was bad off if they couldn't pass around a jug of liquor a-Christmas," he said; "they would feel like it weren't showing hospitality." When I remember that this was the idea of the entire Christian world less than a century ago, I cannot be too severe upon my boys, distressing as these conditions are. Killis spoke again shortly. "I want every boy here that can get to my house on Clinch a-Christmas to come, and see a good time," he announced. "Come the Saturday after New Christmas. I can't drink myself, on account of what paw said; but I got good-and-plenty for my friends. And maw she'll give you all you can eat. And we'll shoot off all paw's guns and pistols."