Biscuit cared nothing for Nancy; he had a lady love of his own. Of course he was polite to Nancy, but he was polite to every lady. And Nancy cared nothing for Biscuit. She had found him useful in her scheme of life, and had accordingly made use of him. But she loved him not. However, as far as the Christmas tree was concerned she was innocent of using him even as an exciter. He had offered the tree, and she had taken it. Somewhere Sube had learned the history of the tree, and when he saw it he shook his head dubiously. "Pretty punk, isn't it?" he asked. "Is that the best you could get?" "Uh huh, the very best," Nancy emphatically assured him. "Why didn't you let _me_ get you a tree?" he demanded. "I'd 'ave got you one a hundred times better'n that." "Oo--oo! Could you, honest?" "Could I!" "Will you do it?" "Will I? Half a dozen if you want 'em." Nancy assured him that one was all she could possibly use, and thereupon he obtained his ax and set out to conquer the forest. But he soon found that Biscuit's uncle Peter had spoken the truth when he said that good Christmas trees were scarce. They were; decidedly scarce. The few that had come through the dry fall without unwithered limbs had already been hewn by the early tree-hunters. And Sube was hard to please. He had in his mind the picture of an ideal Christmas tree, and as he rejected one prospect after another, the picture became more vivid. "You're a rusty runt," he informed an anæmic-looking pine that appeared in his path. "And you're too much like a beanpole," he told another. "Yes, and you're lop-sided," he explained to a third; "you look like you'd had an arm cut off." The afternoon waned. Dusk came on. To be in the woods after dark would be quite useless, so he might as well be starting for home. And still the picture of the perfect tree possessed his mind. If he could only think where it was. Then suddenly it came to him. Why, of course! That was just where he had seen it! It wasn't exactly growing wild, but the people who inhabited the place wouldn't care. He felt quite sure about that. And anyway, it would be dark by the time he reached there. An hour later when Nancy Guilford opened the door in response to his ring (for which she had been listening for some time) a perfect specimen of cypress greeted her delighted gaze. It was bright green, symmetrical and bushy-limbed. It was as perfect as the picture on a Christmas card. Nancy's exclamations and gurglings of delight brought her mother to the door, with the result that Sube was invited over that evening to help trim the tree. When he arrived some two hours later he found the gift tree mounted in a disguised soap box, and standing at one end of the parlor from which the furniture had been removed to facilitate the laying of the crash, with the entire household gathered round about offering on-lookers' advice as to the most effective way of decorating it.