244 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
“Oh, you’re trying to catch me with a riddle or some- 
thing.” 
“Tf I am, I’ll tell you the answer at the birds’ Christmas 
tree next Tuesday,” called Sarah, as she turned in at her 
own gate. 
* * * * * * * 
A two-inch fall of soft, clinging snow fell during the 
night before Christmas eve, so that the next morning 
“everything looked as pretty as the pictures on a calen- 
dar,” as Sarah Barnes said, when she arrived at Gray 
Lady’s door, bright and early, to help decorate the birds’ 
tree. 
Sarah did not enter the door, however, for she was 
joined on the porch by Goldilocks and Ann, and together 
they walked through the garden to Birdland. 
Jacob Hughes had swept paths from the house in and 
out among the trees through the garden. In Birdland 
he had used the single-horse snow-plough to scrape a 
track running from the bird lunch-counter, about the 
edge of the orchard, and then through the centre down to 
the old farm-house of the Swallow Chimney, that stood in 
the lower corner facing on what had been a cross-road, but 
was now a pretty grass-grown lane, with the snow wreath- 
ing the bushes of black alder, with its red, glistening 
berries, giving out a real Christmas feeling. 
What had happened to the old house of the Swallow 
Chimney, where the General’s father had lived, but which 
had now remained closed for so many years, merely a 
storage-place for old furniture? 
Smoke was coming from the great stone chimney, new 
