He looked round then, with a very satisfied feeling. There he had them, the two poor animals that depended out of him, but that served him and his so well, too; had them safe and warm from the storm and rain outside. He swung the lantern to and fro, so that he could see everything that was in the stable. One end of it was filled with hay and straw. The light gleamed here, gleamed there upon the kind, homely plenty he had stored. Then it fell upon a heap of something else; something that glistened from many points, green and cheerful.
"The holly'n'ivy," Big Michael thought, "that I cut this morning, and has it here, the way it would be handy to do out the place in greenery against Art and the wife would be here! Well, well! I wouldn't wish to go against Herself, and she so fretted; but sure I might as well not have cut it at all!"
He stood and stared at it, very mournful in himself. For the best part of the Christmas to Michael was not the good feeding Herself always provided, though he could take his share of that, as well as another; no, but the holly and ivy and the Candle and the Crib; and now she had set her face against them all. And it wouldn't be Christmas at all, he thought, without them!
"Why can't I have it Christmas here," he said to himself, "and not be letting all these beautiful green branches go to waste! That's what I'll do!"
And with that, he laid down the lantern, and began to decorate the little stable. He moved slowly, but the work grew under his hands. He put the bright, glistening holly in the rack that the cow fed from, and over the door. And he flung the long curving trails of ivy over the rafters, so that they hung down, and the whole place became the most loveliest bower of green that you might ask to see.
He had just put up the last of his green stuff, when the lantern flickered up and then quenched; it was burnt out.
[Illustration: "BIG MICHAEL CONTRIVED TO LIGHT THE CANDLE"]
"Dear, dear!" thought Michael; "a pity it is to say there's no light to see it by; even if there's no one to look at it, itself!"
He stood still a bit. It always took Michael a good while even to think. Then he said to himself, "Wait a bit! go aisy, now, will ye!" as if the wife was there to be prodding him on. And then he began slowly to unbutton his coat, and then another under that, and another, and so on, much like peeling skins off an onion, till at last he came to something that he drew out very carefully; something long and slim, and that gleamed white in the light of a match he struck against the wall.