She hobbled down to the gate. “What upon airth, Jakey Ledbetter?” she asked. Her old neighbour’s answer was an impressive silence while his unsteady hands plucked from the tree a roll of blue calico. “We reckoned, Grover Cleveland and me did, that this yer sprigged pattern would be becomin’ to your build,” he said presenting it. “You ain’t tellin’ me that this yer’s for me!”—she smoothed out a fold with a quivering motion of her rheumatic old hand—“Colonel Ledbetter, I never _did_ have a store frock before and it’s more’n I ever expected to own in this world.” “Moo-o,” complained the cow and overturned the bucket, whereupon an avalanche of “roughness” descended upon her head. “La me,” exclaimed Mis’ Jimson, “is Christmas trees for the dumb critters too?” “That’s the view Grover Cleveland ’pears to take of it. Thar’s enough for one fodderin’ gran’son; we’ll drive round and put the rest in the shed.” Shielding her eyes with her hand the old woman watched them out of sight. “I ain’t been carin’ lately whether I was livin’ or not,” she mused, “but if Christmas trees is beginnin’ to circolate in these yer mountings, I aim to perk up and live long enough to git my share.” Most of the old people who were young when gran’daddy was a boy still occupied their fathers’ holdings in clefts and coves up in the higher mountains and to them the tree was carried while the sunshine still slanted and the roads were unthawed. Time flies or I would tell of its triumphant journey; how faded eyes grew bright and wrinkles wreathed themselves into smiles; how salutations and jokes fresh fifty years ago tripped upon the tongue as nimbly as in their early days. Only one failed to respond to the Christmas spirit of the occasion. That was old Captain Sumter. They came upon him leaning over his remnant of front fence viciously fletcherizing tobacco of his own unskillful curing. “What fool consarn’s that, Jake Ledbetter?” he growled as the turnout stopped before him. “It’s a Chrisamus tree,” called Grover Cleveland, scrambling to the ground and presenting him with a package of choice Durham. The old man pocketed it but his thanks were of a fashion peculiarly his own: “Jake Ledbetter, you always was the durndest fool in Junaluska.” Only one took exception to her gift. That was Aunt Sally Long, the “queer old stick.” “Now Jakey Ledbetter,” she whined, “I can’t put that caliker to no use in the world. I wove this frock myself mighty nigh five year ago”—she held out her narrow skirt for his inspection—“and I ain’t snagged it yet. I reckon it’s goin’ to last as long’s I do, at any rate I don’t want another frock added unto me. I’d a heap ruther you’d a brung me a pound of snuff.”