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"There's my hand on it, Drennie," he said "We start back to New York

to-et there, I put on overalls, and go

to work When I propose next, I'll have soht, and was racing h swirl of water thrown up fro in its wake

Christmas came to Misery wrapped in a drab antic cones of raw and sticky chocolate, except

where the snow lay patched upon their cheerless slopes The skies were

low and leaden, and across their gray stretches a spirit of squalid

melancholy rode with the tarnished sun Windowless cabins, with tight-

closed doors, becaht In their vitiated atrew stolidly

sullen Nowhere was a hint of the season's cheer Theclose to the jug ofout the day Mountain children, who had never heard of

Kris Kingle, knew of an ancient tradition that at Christht

the cattle in the barns and fields knelt down, as they had knelt around

the ed slopes of the hills the elder

bushes ceased to rattle dead stalks, and burst into white sprays of

momentary bloom

Christmas itself was a week distant, and, at the cabin of the Widow

Miller, Sally was sitting alone before the logs She laid down the

slate and spelling-book, over which her forehead had been strenuously