CHAPTER I.
CHRISTMAS EVE IN OAKFIELD.
It was Christmas Eve, and the first snow of the season lay upon the fields of Oakfield, and the wintry wind blew cold and chill through the leafless trees in the yard and shook the windows of the old red farm-house, where Uncle Obed Harris lived, and where in his comfortable kitchen he sat waiting for the supper which his wife, whom everybody knew as Aunt Hannah, or Grandma Harris, was putting upon the table. Across the common and distant from the house a quarter of a mile or more, the stone church was seen with lights shining from every pane of glass, for the worshippers at St. Mark’s had that night, in addition to their usual Christmas-tree, an illumination in honor of Bethlehem’s child, born amid the Judean hills so many years ago. And ever and an
