As Christmas day drew near, gray clouds marshalled and loosed white messengers of peace and good-will to the frozen earth until the land was robed in a thick, soft, shining mantle of pure white—­the first spiritualization of the earth for the birth of spring.  It was the mother’s wish that her two sons should marry on the same day and on that day, and Judith and Phyllis yielded.  So early that afternoon, she saw together Judith, as pure and radiant as a snow-hung willow in the sunshine, and her son, with the light in his face for which she had prayed so many years—­saw them standing together and clasp hands forever.  They took a short wedding trip, and that straight across the crystal fields, where little Phyllis stood with Basil in uniform—­straight and tall and with new lines, too, but deepened merely, about his handsome mouth and chin—­waiting to have their lives made one.  And, meanwhile, Bob and Molly too were making ready; for if there be a better hot-bed of sentiment than the mood of man and woman when the man is going to war it is the mood of man and woman when the man has come home from war; and with cries and grunts and great laughter and singing, the negroes were pulling the yule-log from its long bath and across the snowy fields; and when, at dusk, the mother brought her two sons and her two daughters and the Pages and Stantons to her own roof, the big log, hidden by sticks of pine and hickory, was sputtering Christmas cheer with a blaze and crackle that warmed body and heart and home.  That night the friends came from afar and near; and that night Bob, the faithful, valiant Bob, in a dress-suit that was his own and new, and Mrs. Crittenden’s own gift, led the saucy Molly, robed as no other dusky bride at Canewood was ever arrayed, into the dining-room, while the servants crowded the doors and hallway and the white folk climbed the stairs to give them room.  And after a few solemn moments, Bob caught the girl in his arms and smacked her lips loudly: 

“Now, gal, I reckon I got yer!” he cried; and whites and blacks broke into jolly laughter, and the music of fiddles rose in the kitchen, where there was a feast for Bob’s and Molly’s friends.  Rose, too, the music of fiddles under the stairway in the hall, and Mrs. Crittenden and Judge Page, and Crittenden and Mrs. Stanton, and Judith and Basil, and none other than Grafton and radiant little Phyllis led the way for the opening quadrille.  It was an old-fashioned Christmas the mother wanted, and an old-fashioned Christmas, with the dance and merriment and the graces of the old days, that the mother had.  Over the portrait of the eldest Crittenden, who slept in Cuba, hung the flag of the single star that would never bend its colours again to Spain.  Above the blazing log and over the fine, strong face of the brave father, who had fought to dissolve the Union, hung the Stars and Bars—­proudly.  And over the brave brother, who looked down from the north wall, hung proudly the Stars and Stripes for which he had given his young life.