"It's the twenty-fifth of December," corrected Unger, grimly.

Phinney swallowed two or three times and fumbled his hands together before he

went on.

"Little Emmy, one of my young uns, is sick," he said, rather dragging the words. "She was getting kind of worse when I left home, and it don't seem like it would be right for to make us get out and move with a sick young un, specially on Christmas."

It was the reiteration of Christmas that further hardened Unger. Otherwise he might have yielded a few days in order. to be rid of the matter and to get to work.

"I did n't make the young un sick, did I?" He threw the ax over his shoulder preparatory to moving away. ""T ain't my fault you ain't more forehanded, is it?"

Phinney made Unger think more and more of a rabbit. Now, as he struggled with some inward difficulty, he looked like a rabbit that had just been shot. "Won't you please-"

"No!"

If Phinney had stood up and defied Esau Unger, the little man would have been physically safe, and he might possibly have won his case. It was not in Unger's code to strike a man smaller than himself, and he liked grit. But this weakness made his very stomach turn.

"Why did n't you look ahead?" he demanded. "A feller that 's renting a farm is a naturally shiftless cuss, or he would. n't be renting; he 'd own a place. Why be I well fixed? Because I pay every dollar the day it's due. And I calc'late to make other folks do the same. I ain't asking no favors, and I ain't giving none. Them 's my principles."

He wheeled sharply, and walked away without once looking back. His Mackinaw jacket was flapping open, and he drew deep breaths of the air. To him the clear cold was a stimulant, and he wanted to breathe out the feeling that Christianity and Christmas and Nahum Phinney had raised in him. He plowed upward through the snow that covered his fat

acres to the foot of Old Roundtop, rising in somber grays and greens against the winter sky. Between him and the mountain there was understanding.

Unger halted at the base of one of the steep sides of the spur, covered with sturdy second- and third-growth timber. He was chopping primarily for fire-wood, but he planned to cut the ground over clean, selling the larger and better-grown trunks for lumber. In a moment his jacket and mittens were off. Then bracing himself at the foot of a young maple, he swung the ax in a long arc, with all the power of his taut muscles, and sent its blade deep into the body of the tree. The ax-head bit in almost to the helve. Two skilful jerks tore it loose, and again it came glittering down. This time thick. chips flew, and a clean, wedge-shaped cut appeared. A day's work was well begun.

A few minutes later the maple tottered, and Unger stood aside as it went crashing down through the undergrowth. Dripping with sweat, but breathing evenly, he took no rest. He worked up the slope, chopping out underbrush when he had to, and sending tree after tree swaying mightily downward to await either the chains of the log-team or the process of working up into four-foot lengths. Esau Unger was like a perfect machine, operating with a magnificent ease of which he was un

aware.

Well up the side of the spur there was an oak of considerable size, forking out in two branches not far from the base. The axman set himself to it with a certain zest in the conquering of its thickness, but it was some time before he stood pridefully back and looked at a deep notch scarring into the heart of the tree on the downhill side. On the upper side there was another and smaller notch, with its apex higher in the trunk. A few more well-placed blows, struck with a good arm, would bring the tree down.

Unger took a fresh grip and swung his ax. The first blow sent a quiver throughout the length of the oak. At the second there was an ominous snap, then a chorus of little cracking noises. For the third

time he drove his steel downward. Then came a mighty rending of wood, and Unger, snapping the ax free, looked upward.

He saw death coming down upon him. He had chopped accurately enough to fell the tree straight down the slope, but one of the great branches had caught in the top of a smaller tree and swung the oak out of its course just as it tottered over. Unger sprang backward, and might have saved himself had it not been for the stump of a little bush no bigger than a man's finger that he had lopped off not half an hour before. His foot caught; he tripped and fell, and rolled over, with the roar of the falling tree like an avalanche of sound against his ears. As the man's muscles tensed for a desperate. spring, it seemed that the heavens and earth thundered together. The breath went out of his body in one gasp.

Esau Unger, face downward in the snow, tried to rise, and could not. On his back and loins there was a weight that mocked him. He twisted and wriggled, digging his bare hands into the snow, until he could turn his head and glance upward. The rough trunk of the oak loomed above; a little hollow in the ground had saved Unger's life. His body lay wedged into this depression by a weight that, given a few more inches to fall, would have crushed flesh and bones to pulp. He could move his legs and arms, but otherwise he was held powerless, save that by great expense of strength he was able to lift his head and shoulders

a little way.

Unger was not hurt so far as he could tell, but at the end of a few seconds his feeling of relief passed. It was no small matter to be pinned down by a tree. His hands grew cold, and it was only after considerable exertion that he drew them together and washed his stiffening fingers in snow. A sudden chill went through

him, and he remembered that a flannel shirt and an undershirt were all his protection against a temperature well below zero. The heat of exercise had passed, and sweat was congealing in his hair. Already there was a mound of ice along

his beard. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that it was necessary to call for help, only to realize, with cold striking into his heart, that there was no one to hear.

The nearest house was Esau Unger's own, down on the river road, and beyond that lay the house that Phinney rented. The strongest voice could not reach to either of them from the mountain-side. He had told Martha not to expect him for mid-day dinner. At best a searchingparty could not be expected until well into the evening, and Unger knew that he would be frozen long before nightfall. He was no coward, but at the thought of death creeping slowly upon his helplessness, he raised his voice and bellowed a call for help that went echoing away from the granite cliffs of Old Roundtop. Again and again he shouted, and the echoes drifted back in feeble cries.

Unger was now beset by panic, and after a little time he ceased to call out and began to struggle, for if there was any chance of getting free, it behooved him to find it before his strength waned. Long since sensation had left his feet, and now his fingers were growing numb. He raised himself, turtle-wise, and pulled and jerked at his cumbered body. The muscles knotted across his shoulders, and he strained until faintness touched him, but it was all without result. He dropped back and lay panting, with his face against the snow.

That desperate effort for freedom had taught the imprisoned man one thing: he could keep alive as long as he had strength to struggle, for the exercise had stirred his blood again. So he began to twist and squirm, and in that way worked up a little glow of heat. It seemed to him that he had been rolling his head and working his arms for indefinite years when a dead branch cracked. Unger braced himself to the difficult task of lifting his head. Twenty feet away, Nahum Phinney was standing on snow-shoes, watching his writhings.

For a brief time the men looked at each other in silence. At first Unger was

in a measure stunned by the shock of sudden deliverance, and then his heart misgave him that perhaps this was not deliverance, after all, for Phinney did not speak or stir. He stood and looked. Something of disinterestedness in his air chilled the man on the ground more than the cold. But although Unger was shaken, he was not afraid, and a part of his old contempt for Phinney returned.

"Get me out, man!" he ordered. "I 'm almost froze'. Can't you see what's happened?"

Nahum Phinney did not move. He continued to look down at Unger with expressionless eyes.

"Little Emmy 's purty sick, and I 'm hurrying 'cross lots to the village after the doctor," he explained. "Don't believe I got time to get you out, Mr. Unger. It would take quite a spell."

Esau Unger gasped with astonishment. He had never besought help of any man before; but never before had he been unable to help himself. For a moment he hardly knew what to say.

"You ain't going to leave me here?" he asked. "I'll die!"

"You knowed the tree was going to fall, did n't you?" Phinney looked almost accusing.

"Course I did," growled Unger. "It twisted round, and then I stumbled over a cussed root."

"It ain't my fault you wa'n't more foresighted, is it? I did n't put the root there, did I?"

Suddenly Esau Unger realized that he was being mocked with words out of his own mouth, and by a little man whom he had mentally compared to a rabbit. He was not as angry as he might have been, for cold and dread had worn him down. Then, too, there was amazement at the failure of his own self-sufficiency. So it was not hard to speak calmly.

"You ain't mad about this morning, be you?" He made an attempt to laugh. "Well, the joke 's on me all right. You get me out of here, and you can have all the time you want; say two or three months, if you got to have it."

He expected that this would settle the

matter.

"Much obliged, Mr. Unger, but I don't want no time," the little man's voice droned monotonously. "I see Peter Sayre after I left you, and I'm figuring to move on to his place to-morrow-Christmas. I ain't asking no favors, and I ain't giving none."

Phinney stooped and carefully tied the thong that bound one of his snow-shoes. Unger struggled with a growing belief that the other intended to leave him to die. He would have to beg, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.

"Phinney," he began, "I-I 'm kind of sorry about this morning. Mebbe I ought to of been easy on you. Tell you what I'll do: I 'll give you a hundred dollars, cash money, to get this tree off me."

Then Nahum Phinney straightened up and increased in stature until he was no longer like a rabbit. With blazing eyes he pointed one mittened hand at Unger.

"You ain't fit to live," he thundered. "You ain't so good as that tree you jest cut down. A tree don't go ag'in' its kind, like you do. What 's God or Christmas or kindness to you? You was going to turn my sick baby outdoors like I would n't turn a sick dog out. It 's wuth more to get the doctor quick for my little Emmy than it is to help a feller such as you be. God Almighty ain't got no use for critters that turns sick babies into the snow. Nor I ain't. Freeze, damn ye!"

Phinney turned, and started off with swinging strides. Unger, dazed and sickened and despairing, listened as the flap of the snow-shoes grew fainter and finally died He was doomed. A groan away. of impotence and self-pity shook him. Then the meaning of all that Nahum Phinney had said began to take shape in his mind until it stood out as sharp and clear as the snow crystals before his eyes. For the first time in his life he wondered if God and such things did make a difference. He tried to summon back his old resolution, but it failed him utterly, and he let his face fall into the snow. He was alone with death.

Unger did not know whether minutes