E-text prepared by Michael Gray (Lost_Gamer@comcast.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 16134-h.htm or 16134-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/1/3/16134/16134-h/16134-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/1/3/16134/16134-h.zip) THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE A Story of the Forest by HENRY VAN DYKE Illustrated by Howard Pyle Charles Scribner's Sons New York University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. MDCCCXCVII [Illustration--So they took the little fir from its place] CONTENTS I The Call of the Woodsman II The Trail Through the Forest III The Shadow of the Thunder-Oak IV The Felling of the Tree ILLUSTRATIONS Photogravures from Original Drawings by Howard Pyle. So they took the little fir from its place . . . (Frontispiece) The fields around lay bare to the moon . . . The sacred hammer of the God Thor . . . Then Winfried told the story of Bethlehem . . . I THE CALL OF THE WOODSMAN I The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722. Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,--a gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley. In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All day long there had been a strange and joyful stir among the nuns. A breeze of curiosity and excitement had swept along the corridors and through every quiet cell. The elder sisters,--the provost, the deaconess, the stewardess, the portress with her huge bunch of keys jingling at her girdle,--had been hurrying to and fro, busied with household cares. In the huge kitchen there was a bustle of hospitable preparation. The little bandy-legged dogs that kept the spits turning before the fires had been trotting steadily for many an hour, until their tongues hung out for want of breath. The big black pots swinging from the cranes had bubbled and gurgled and shaken and sent out puffs of appetizing steam. St. Martha was in her element. It was a field-day for her virtues.