A cabin. A cabin in the woods. In the cabin a great fireplace piled
high with logs, fiercely ablaze. On either side of the broad
hearthstone a hound sat on his haunches, looking gravely, as only a
hound in a meditative mood can, into the glowing fire. In the center
of the cabin, whose every nook and corner was bright with the ruddy
firelight, stood a wooden table, strongly built and solid. At the
table sat John Norton, poring over a book,--a book large of size, with
wooden covers bound in leather, brown with age, and smooth as with the
handling of many generations. The whitened head of the old man was
bowed over the broad page, on which one hand rested, with the
forefinger marking the sentence. A cabin in the woods filled with
firelight, a table, a book, an old man studying the book. This was the
scene on Christmas Eve. Outside, the earth was white with snow, and in
the blue sky above the snow was the white moon.
"It says here," said the Trapper, speaking to himself, "it says here,
'_Give to him that lacketh, and from him that hath not, withhold not
thine hand._' It be a good sayin' fur sartin; and the world would be
a good deal better off, as I conceit, ef the folks follered the sayin'
a leetle more closely." And here the old man paused a moment, and,
with his hand still resting on the page, and his forefinger still
pointing at the sentence, seemed pondering what he had been reading.
At last he broke the silence again, saying:--
"Yis, the world would be a good deal better off, ef the folks in it
follered the sayin';" and then he added, "There's another spot in the
book I'd orter look at to-night; it's a good ways furder on, but I
guess I can find it. Henry says the furder on you git in the book, the
better it grows, and I conceit the boy may be right; for there be a
good deal of murderin' and fightin' in the fore part of the book, that
don't make pleasant readin', and what the Lord wanted to put it in fur
is a good deal more than a man without book-larnin' can understand.
Murderin' be murderin', whether it be in the Bible or out of the
Bible; and puttin' it in the Bible, and sayin' it was done by the
Lord's commandment, don't make it any better. And a good deal of the
fightin' they did in the old time was sartinly without reason and
ag'in jedgment, specially where they killed the womenfolks and the
leetle uns." And while the old man had thus been communicating with
himself, touching the character of the Old Testament, he had been
turning the leaves until he had reached the opening chapters of the
New, and had come to the description of the Saviour's birth, and the
angelic announcement of it on the earth. Here he paused, and began to
read. He read as an old man unaccustomed to letters must read,--slowly
and with a show of labor, but with perfect contentment as to his
progress, and a brightening face.
[Illustration: THE OLD TRAPPER'S FIREPLACE.]
"This isn't a trail a man can hurry on onless he spends a good deal of
his time on it, or is careless about notin' the signs, fur the words
be weighty, and a man must stop at each word, and look around awhile,
in order to git all the meanin' out of 'em--yis, a man orter travel
this trail a leetle slow, ef he wants to see all there is to see on
it."