“We must have a big Christmas dinner,” said Jim Hart, “an’ I’ll cook it.”

“An’ I’ll help you,” said Shif’less Sol.

“And I,” added Paul.

That evening they sat around the fire, talking in the mellow glow; but their talk was not of the Indians, nor of the chase, nor of themselves, but of those behind at Wareville.  Paul shut his eyes and looked dreamily into the fire.  He could see the people at the settlement getting ready for the great festival, preparing little gifts, and the children crawling reluctantly into their homemade trundle, or box beds.  He felt at that moment a deep kindness toward all things.

They covered up the ashes after a while, and then, in the darkness, every one in his turn laid out some little gift for the others—­a clasp knife, a powderhorn, a prized deerskin, or something else that counted among his possessions.  But no one was to look until the morning, and soon all fell asleep.

They were up the next day at the first sight of dawn, and compared their gifts with great rejoicings.  Shif’less Sol had presented to Jim Hart a splendid clasp knife, a valuable possession in the wilderness, as a token of his great friendship and exceeding high regard, and Jim was like a child in his delight.  In fact, there was something of the child, or rather of the child’s simplicity, in all of them.

The Christmas dinner was a signal triumph in Jim Hart’s life.  Capably assisted by Paul and Shif’less Sol, he labored on it most of the day, and at last they sat down to a magnificent wilderness table of buffalo hump, venison, squirrel, rabbit, fish, wild turkey, and other kinds of game, flanked by bread baked of the Indian meal, and finished off with the nuts Paul had gathered.  Forest and lake had yielded bounteously, and they ate long and happily.

“Why anybody wants to live back thar in the East in the towns is more’n I can understand,” said Shif’less Sol.  “You’ve got room to breathe here, an’ the fat game is runnin’ roun’ in the woods, jest beggin’ you to stick a knife in its back an’ eat it.”

Paul laughed.

“How about the danger from the Indians, Sol?” asked Paul.

“You don’t expect to have a perfect world here below, do you, Paul?” replied Shif’less Sol.  “Thar ain’t never nothin’ without a thorn in it, but our thorn is about ez little a one ez you could think of.  The Injuns give us a kind o’ excitin’ variety, an’ don’t we always get away from ’em?”

No more work was done that day, and in the evening they went to sleep earlier than usual, and slept very soundly.  A moon of pure silver came out, and bathed all the vast wilderness in its light.  A huge, yellow panther, lean and fierce with hunger, wandered in the snow across the frozen lake, and put foot upon the island.  There the pleasant odor of food came to his nostrils, and he lifted up his ears.  As the pleasant odor came again his tawny eyes became more ferocious, and the lips curled back from the rows of cruel, white teeth.  He drew his long, lithe body over the snow, and came to one of the paths.  He might have turned back because the path was strong with the odor of a strange and perhaps powerful creature; but he was a very hungry, a very large, and a very bold panther, and he went on.