The big sleigh stopped by the side porch. Hal the Red Roan and Teddy
the Buckskin Horse tossed their heads merrily, and the sleigh-bells
jingled even after the team had come to a halt.

"All aboard!" shouted the Toyman, as he stamped the snow from his
boots and entered the kitchen. "We're going to find the biggest,
finest tree in the whole woods! Who wants to go?"

Who wouldn't want to go! There was a scurrying for boots and coats,
mufflers and mittens. Then they tumbled in, the sleighbells jingled,
and off they flew through the deep, powdery, sparkling snow.

The river was not in motion; it was not flowing at all this day, but
lay like a long lead pipe, twisting between the white snow banks.
Sometimes, when the sun came out and shone upon it, the lead was
changed to pearl.

They drove away from it now, up by Jake Miller's place, and past the
Fizzletrees' and the Van Nostrands', then up the hill to the woods.

The trees stood still like a great congregation, Marmaduke thought.
There were giant oaks, their heavy branches all gnarled and twisted;
tall chestnuts with rough gray trunks; shaggy hickories with bark
always ready to peel off like "proud flesh"; little ironwood trees
whose wood was so tough that the axe must be sharp to cut them at all;
and silver birches, gracefully swaying in the wind, and white against
the snow. Most of them were naked and bare, but on the oaks and
birches rustled a few little left-over leaves, brown and dried-up, and
crackling and cackling like little old people. Ah! but everywhere, in,
and around, and between, the naked trees, and on higher up the hill,