"Then what's the matter?"
"Pymeut no like dark;" and it was not until Mac put on his own snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way with him that Nicholas was at last induced to return home.
The moment Kaviak was ascertained to be asleep, O'Flynn displayed the mucklucks. No mistake, they were dandies! The Boy hung one of them up, by its long leg, near the child's head at the side of the bunk, and then conferred with O'Flynn.
"The Colonel's made some little kind o' sweet-cake things for the tree. I could spare you one or two."
"Divil a doubt Kaviak'll take it kindly, but furr mesilf I'm thinkin' a pitaty's a dale tastier."
There was just one left in camp. It had rolled behind the flour-sack, and O'Flynn had seized on it with rapture. Where everybody was in such need of vegetable food, nobody under-estimated the magnificence of O'Flynn's offering, as he pushed the pitaty down into the toe of the muckluck.
"Sure, the little haythen'll have a foine Christian Christmas wid that same to roast in the coals, begorra!" and they all went to bed save Mac, who had not returned, and the Boy, who put on his furs, and went up the hill to the place where he kept the Christmas-tree lodged in a cotton-wood.
He shook the snow off its branches, brought it down to the cabin, decorated it, and carried it back.
Mac, Salmon P. Hardy, and the frost-bitten Schiff were waked, bright and early Christmas morning, by the Boy's screaming with laughter.