On the day before Christmas the snow lay deep on the prairie and the children’s greatest anxiety was whether “he” would find the little house which was half buried. Margaret, with the characteristic ingenuity of the female of the species, suggested tying a piece of bright cloth where “he” would notice it. And Mack, with the characteristic daring of the less deadly of the same, got on top of the low house via a crusty snow bank and tied one of little John’s red flannel shirts to the stove-pipe.

At lamp-lighting, they all hung up their stockings, even Will and Abbie. The children were beside themselves with excitement. By their parents’ stocking they put the little presents they had made for them. They danced and skipped and sang. They cupped their eyes with their hands, pressing their faces to the little half-window and looking out into the night. The gleam of the stars was reflected in the snow, and the silence of the sky was the silence of the prairie.

“I see the Star.”

“So do I. Right up there.”

“It looks like it was over a stable.”

“Yes, sir. It looks like it was over a manger-stable.”

“Now it looks like it’s stopping over us.”

“Yes, sir, it looks like it’s stopping right over our house.”

Wide-eyed, they went to bed. The three faces in a row on the pillows, with the patchwork quilts tucked under the chins, were flushed with anticipation.

“Always keep the Christmas spirit going,” Abbie told them. “Promise me, that when you get big and have homes of your own, you’ll keep the Christmas spirit in your homes.”

“We will,” they promised in glib and solemn accord.

When at last they slept, Will brought in the little cedar tree. The morning found it trimmed with popcorn and tallow candles. And a marvelous flock of butterflies had settled upon it. Their bodies were of dried apples dipped in sugar and their antennæ were pink and feathery, looking surprisingly as though they had once adorned Regina Deal’s bonnet. Will had made and painted Abbie a corner what-not with four shelves, secreting it in the stable behind some straw bedding. And he had constructed a monstrous hobby-horse for the children, the body and head of cottonwood chunks, real horse’s hair for mane and tail, reins and a bit in the steed’s cut-out mouth. The wooden horse of Troy never looked so huge. And then the old brass horn was unwrapped.

“I’m so excited,” Mack said, in solemn ecstasy. “I’m so excited . . . my legs itch.”

Historians say, “The winter of ’seventy-four to ’seventy-five was a time of deep depression.” But historians do not take little children into consideration. Deep depression? To three children on the prairie it was a time of glamour. There was not much to eat in the cupboard. There was little or no money in the father’s flat old pocketbook. The presents were pitifully homely and meager. And all in a tiny house,—a mere shell of a house, on a new raw acreage of the wild, bleak prairie. How could a little rude cabin hold so much white magic? How could a little sod house know such enchantment? And how could a little hut like that eventually give to the midwest so many influential men and women? How, indeed? Unless, . . . unless, perchance, the star did stop over the house?