Christmas

s and kept his counsel, descending nightly to the ground-floor café to dine on ambiguous dishes at tables of other bank swallows who nested in the same cliff. But as the days went by, he fou

th, he set out one morning for the ancient building down in that part of the village whic

r the 8.10 Express came in; and since on the morning following a snowfall the 8.10 Express was always late, Old Trail Town lay locked in a kind of circular argument, and everybody stayed in

ure. In the uncompromising cleanness of that wash of Winter light, Ebenezer Rule was himself, for anybody to see. Looking like countless other men, lean, alert, preoccupied, his tall figure stooped, his smooth, pale face like a photograph too much retouched, this commonplace man took his place in the day almost as

hoveling his walk, and stood wiping his snow shovel with an end of his muffler. When he saw Ebene

his gesture toward his show window, "look wh

and its sprinkling cart. Like these, appearing intermittently, the figure had seized on the imagination of the children and grown in association until it belonged to everybody, by sheer use and wont. It was a papier-maché Santa Claus, three feet high, white-bearded, gray-gowned, with tall pointed cap-rather the more sober Saint Nicholas of

ost of

oo mu

Folks

Chr

oo.

t neat?" s

hat's the flag for?

al appropriate. A Japanese umbrella wasn't exactly in season, seems though. A flag was about th

ess," Ebenezer

ot to have no Christmas. You've got to find something that'll express nothing, and express it forcible. In

what the Emporium would do to keep up with the Exchange. But in the Emporium windo

he store door and

ack at the desk, "can't you

s at either side. The fire had just been kindled in the stove, and the air in

he, "but the night before Christmas

Ebenezer asked, closin

et. But I'll be billblowed if I'm going to let Christma

'd fill my window up with useful articles-caps and mittens and stockings and warm underwear and dishes and toothbrushes. And I'd say:

hook h

looked intently at Ebenezer. "Jenny's been buyi

y Wing? I heard she was here. I ain't seen

ds, it was," sa

ed his lack of

"I s'pose you know," he added, "that Bruce, the young beggar, quit working for me in t

Old Trail Town knew that,

nt on having Christmas, no matter what the town dec

's only buying white goods," he repeated. And, Ebenezer still s

..." Ebenezer answered something, but his responses were so often guttural and indistinguishable that his will to reply was regarded as nominal, anyway. He also knew that now, just before him, Buff Miles was proceeding with the snowplow, cu

d as he was to relate every experience to himself, measure it, value it by its own value to him, th

ays put on wrong, so that the buttons were on the inside. Bruce's baby. Good heavens! It had been a shock when Bruce graduated

Malcolm had lived, Malcolm m

Malcolm had been living. Nobody in Old Trail Town ever heard him speak of them or had ever been answered when Ebenezer had been spoken to concerning them. A high white shaft in the

he chorus to the thing he was thinking about. They were all thinking about it, too. Every one of them knew what he knew. Yet he never saw the bond, but he thought they were only the places where men lived who had been his factory hands and would be so yet if he had not cut them away: Ben Torrey, shoveling off his front walk with his boy sweeping behind him; August Muir, giving his little girl a ride on the snow shovel; Nettie Hatch, clearing the ice out of her mail box, while her sister-the

d where the factory was, he understood at last that he

r the way i

e way it a

ll be for I

o be has not

y and m

y and m

y and m

over and

it, looked over his

observed, grinning, "but I ain't heard nothing to prevent s

zer h

ly demanded of Buff-whom he

e," said Buf

the same age, ain't

nod

" and stood looking at him. Malc

you?" Buff said. "Wait a bit.

making a triumphal progress, fashioning his snow borders wit

he way it

way it all

e little house that was the factory office, as if he had prepared the setting for a great

arpet, and a parlour adjoining with figured stuff at the windows and a coal fire in the stove.... And thirty-five years ago it had been that way, when he and his wife and child had lived in the little house where his business was then just starting at a machine s

een. The old account books that he wanted were not here on the shelves, nor in the cupboards of the cold adjoining rooms. They dated so far back that they had been filed away upstairs. H

d put up in their room, the burned place on the floor where he had tipped over a lamp, tattered shreds of the paper she had hung to surprise him, the little sto

ot found among them, he remembered the trunkful up in the tiny loft. He let down from the

the trunks and boxes had been pressed back to the rim of the place. Ebenezer put his hands out, groping. They touched an edge

e missing and the paint worn off-and tenderly licked off-his nose. When they had moved to the other house, he had bought the boy a pony, and this horse had been left behind. Something else stirred in his

ious aspects of the weather, of the climate, of the visible universe. The bookkeeper was a young man, very ready to agree with Ebenezer for the sake of future favour

Ebenezer bade him; "it's the

to his nearsighted eyes, frown

t seems...." he

ezer, sharply; "that's not nee

IELDS CAME FLASHING

kkeeper

ops (4 da

Mrs. Sha

(3-1/4 d

g puzz

4

bur

n roll

e mil

for

olors f

for M

es-m

4

hand:

little face with which she had been wont to illustrate her letters. Ebenezer stared, grunted, turned to the last page of the book. There, in bold figures, th

rfect comprehension and sympathy. Ebenezer averted his eyes, and the bookkeeper felt diml

s cling to a man

" said Ebenezer, dr

lting snow. And the Thought that he did not think

half. She never told me she tried