PRELUDE

Chapter
     I. The Story of the Little Red Sleigh
    II.  The Crystal City and the Traveller
   III.  The Clock Tinker
    IV.  The Uphill Road
     V. At the Sign o’ the Dial
    VI.  A Certain Rich Man
   VII.  Darrel of the Blessed Isles
  VIII.  Dust of Diamonds in the Hour-glass
    IX.  Drove and Drovers
     X. An Odd Meeting
    XI.  The Old Rag Doll
   XII.  The Santa Claus of Cedar Hill
  XIII.  A Christmas Adventure
   XIV.  A Day at the Linley Schoolhouse
    XV.  The Tinker at Linley School
   XVI.  A Rustic Museum
  XVII.  An Event in the Rustic Museum
 XVIII.  A Day of Difficulties
   XIX.  Amusement and Learning
    XX.  At the Theatre of the Woods
   XXI.  Robin’s Inn
  XXII.  Comedies of Field and Dooryard
 XXIII.  A New Problem
  XXIV.  Beginning the Book of Trouble
   XXV.  The Spider Snares
  XXVI.  The Coming of the Cars
 XXVII.  The Rare and Costly Cup
XXVIII.  Darrel at Robin’s Inn
  XXIX.  Again the Uphill Road
   XXX.  Evidence
  XXXI.  A Man Greater than his Trouble
 XXXII.  The Return of Thurst Tilly
XXXIII.  The White Guard
 XXXIV.  More Evidence
  XXXV.  At the Sign of the Golden Spool
 XXXVI.  The Law’s Approval
XXXVII.  The Return of Santa Claus

DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES

Prelude

Yonder up in the hills are men and women, white-haired, who love to tell of that time when the woods came to the door-step and God’s cattle fed on the growing corn.  Where, long ago, they sowed their youth and strength, they see their sons reaping, but now, bent with age, they have ceased to gather save in the far fields of memory.  Every day they go down the long, well-trodden path and come back with hearts full.  They are as children plucking the meadows of June.  Sit with them awhile, and they will gather for you the unfading flowers of joy and love—­good sir! the world is full of them.  And should they mention Trove or a certain clock tinker that travelled from door to door in the olden time, send your horse to the stable and God-speed them!—­it is a long tale, and you may listen far into the night.

“See the big pines there in the dale yonder?” some one will ask.  “Well, Theron Allen lived there, an’ across the pond, that’s where the moss trail came out and where you see the cow-path—­that’s near the track of the little red sleigh.”

Then—­the tale and its odd procession coming out of the far past.

I

The Story of the Little Red Sleigh

It was in 1835, about mid-winter, when Brier Dale was a narrow clearing, and the horizon well up in the sky and to anywhere a day’s journey.