The Forest was deep, full of brown, leafless oaks and green fir trees, with the wind singing shrill tunes in their branches. In the darkest part was a thick mountain wall, and in the wall there was an old door made of rough boards. The village children, gathering cones in the Forest, had peeped through this door when Christopher had left it open a crack.
"Christopher's home is nothing but a cave with stones for the floor!" the children whispered.
"Beggar Mother stirs a pot that hangs over a fire of logs!" they said.
"Christopher and his little brothers and sisters wear skins for clothing. They sleep, like wolves, on beds of pine and moss!" they said, too, and then they ran away when they saw Christopher coming out.
He was as roughly dressed as one of the baby bears whom he knew in the Göinge Forest and for whom he gathered wild honey; or as shy as one of the little red foxes that had no home save a hollow tree. All his life he had been hungry, and starved, and scorned. But Christopher was known by all of the Forest as loving and gentle and unselfish.
Beggar Mother neither baked nor brewed, but when she went her way down to the village from door to door with all her little ones clinging to her skirts, the villagers would sometimes give her six brown loaves, one for each of her children.
Then Christopher would creep out of the cave and break his bread to give some crumbs to the starlings, the finches, and the baby squirrels. He knew where the wild strawberries grew, and he gathered them for his mother. He pulled grass and leaves for the wild hares. He had once lifted Mother Fox from her trap and sent her back to her babies. He brought spring water from the rocks for the flowers, and never frightened the owls or caught the butterflies.
But the Göinge Forest was cold and asleep now, for it was Christmas time.
Christopher knew that it was now Christmas Eve for he had been to the village and looked in the doors. Lighted candles were being set in the windows. Great pieces of bread and meat were being placed on the tables, and bunches of grain thick with seeds were hung in the gardens to be a Christmas feast for the birds.
But when the villagers saw Christopher from the cave in the Forest looking in their doors, they slammed them shut, for they knew him only as the child of Beggar Mother. They had no room for him on Christmas Eve.