“How do you know the dog’s name?” the boy inquires, now almost roused into curiosity.

“How do I know it? Why because she belonged to me for six months before I went to India, and then I gave her to the lady who I hope is to be my wife now I’ve come back.”

“What—are you Cecil Gordon?”

“The same—at your service ‘Cousin Cis,’ as your little sister used to call me, if, as I suppose, you are my old playfellow Bertie. Two years have made a difference in your size, my lad—and this snow gave your face a blue sort of look which prevented my knowing you at first. And now tell me what pranks have you been playing to get into such a plight?”

“I rode Grey Plover to Appleton this afternoon to get—some things the girls wanted—and the snow-storm came on heavily—and it got horribly dark as you see—and somehow we stumbled into a snow-drift—I’d marked the bad places as I came and thought I could keep clear of them—but the darkness misled me, and the snow got into my eyes. We rolled over together—and my foot caught in the stirrup and came out with an awful wrench—but it’s ever so much better since you cut the boot open.”

“And then I suppose, the pony made off?”

“Yes, I believe so. I felt awfully sick when I got up, but I managed to crawl out of the drift, for I’d just sense enough left to mind being smothered. I don’t suppose I could have lain here very long when you came, or I should have been frozen.”

“Well the great thing will be to get you home as soon as may be—but the snow is getting so deep that it won’t be very pleasant travelling. Can you bear to put that foot to the ground? No? Then don’t try—my legs must do duty for two.”

“Oh! I’m too heavy—you’ll never be able to carry me, especially through the snow.”

“Nonsense! If you begin making difficulties I shall have to treat you as one of our fellows (so the story goes) did the wounded sergeant in Zululand.”

“Oh what was that?”

“Why the enemy were close upon them, and B—— (that was the officer) was bent upon rescuing the sergeant of his troops who was wounded and helpless, and whose own horse had been killed. So he told him to get up behind on his horse—and the sergeant refused, and told B—— to save himself and leave him to perish, and B—— answered in peremptory fashion, ‘If you don’t obey orders at once, I shall punch your head!’”

“Don’t punch mine to-day,” says Bertie with a rather feeble laugh. “It feels so queer and top-heavy. I’ll give you leave to try as soon as I’m all right again.”

“All right. But now about this getting home? Here! you take the bag, and I’ll carry you. Will you ride in ordinary pick-a-back fashion, or as I’ve seen soldiers do at what they call ‘chummy races’ lengthwise across their bearer’s shoulders?”

Bertie prefers the former method, and with some little difficulty is hoisted into the required position.

“How are they all at home?” asks Captain Gordon, after they have advanced some little way in silence.

“Very well—and very jolly—only to-day Cousin Milly was out of spirits, because”—

“Well what?” The tone is sharp and impatient.

“Because you hadn’t written, and she did so want a letter for Christmas. And I thought there might be one by the afternoon post—they do come then sometimes.”

“And that was the reason for your taking that crazy ride through the snow? My dear little fellow,” and the brisk voice is very kind and gentle now, “I am sorry to have been the cause of all this trouble.”

“Oh! never mind—it was partly too to get Alice the candles she was bothering about for the Christmas Tree.—By-the-bye, I hope they’ve not fallen out of my pocket—no, here they are, all right.”

“I’m afraid you found no letter at the post-office after all. You see the orders for home came to us rather suddenly, and when I found I could be in England as soon as a letter could reach, I didn’t write. I am so sorry it happened so!”

“You had lots of real fighting among the Afghans, hadn’t you?”

“Yes—I’ll tell you about it some day. Just now I want my breath for something more than talking. How deep the snow is between these high hedges!”

“Yes—if only we could get over into the fields it would be better—and there is a short cut too.”

“Can we find it?”

“I’ll try—but my head is so stupid somehow—don’t I hear some one whistling behind us?”

As Bertie speaks a young laboring man comes up to them, looks with some surprise at the pair, and answers with a surly grunt to Captain Gordon’s inquiry as to the nearest way to Edenhurst.

“Why Jack, you can show us!” cries Bertie impatiently.

“There’s a stile somewhere that leads right past your mother’s cottage, and then we can get across Higgins’ fields.”

“If there is a cottage I shall be glad of five minutes’ rest by the fire-side,” says Cecil who is beginning to get decidedly “blown.”

“I was just thinking what an awfully lonely road this was.”

“Jack Brown is a surly fellow,” whispers Bertie in his ear, but not so low but that the man catches the last words.

“Surly! And who wouldn’t be, young master, I’d like to know, in my place? Didn’t the Squire have me up for poaching, and didn’t I get three weeks in jail along of snaring a few worthless pheasants? Much he or anyone would have cared if my old mother had starved the while!”

“For shame!” Bertie’s wrath is making him quite energetic. “As if mother and Mildred didn’t go to see the old woman nearly every day, and make sure she wanted for nothing.”

“Well, well,” interrupts Cecil, “don’t rake up bye-gones on Christmas Eve of all days in the year. Forgive and forget—peace and goodwill—that’s what the bells always seem to me to be saying. I say, my friend, I’m sure your Mother would be willing to let the young master sit by her fire for five minutes, after he’s nearly got himself killed—and buried too—riding to Appleton to do his sister and cousin a good turn.”

A shadow of a smile lurks on Jack’s grim visage at this appeal, and he proceeds to lead the way across a difficult “hog-backed” stile, over which he helps to lift Bertie with more gentleness than might be expected. Then striding before them through the snow, which is more even, and easy to wade through in the open field, he presently stops at the door of a little thatched cottage which is opened by a tidy old woman.

Bertie is soon established in her own high-backed wooden chair by the fire, drinking hot if somewhat hay-scented tea, and obtaining great relief from the attentions his friend is now better able to bestow upon the injured foot. Meanwhile this is becoming a very sad Christmas Eve to the anxious watchers at Edenhurst. The Squire has returned home, puzzled and half incredulous at the confused report of Master Bertie’s disappearance which has reached him, but when the snow-soaked saddle and the riderless pony have been shown him, he too grows seriously alarmed, and without waiting to change his wet things sets off in the direction of Appleton.

Other messengers have already been despatched but the hours pass by and no news is obtained, no one happening to think of the short cut and old Mrs. Brown’s cottage. Even the bells are mute—the villagers cannot bear to ring them when their dear lady is in such trouble. She is trying hard to force herself to believe that nothing can be so very wrong—it is foolish to be so over-anxious.

No one has any heart to carry on the joyous preparations for Christmas in which Bertie usually bears an active part, but Mrs. Chetwynd will not let the poor people suffer, and their gifts of warm clothing and tea and sugar are all looked over and carefully ticketed by Mildred and Alice.

Poor girls! they have little spirit for the work, but it is better for them than the dreary waiting which follows. At last Alice can bear it no longer. She throws a cloak round her and steals out into the avenue. The air is clearer now and the snow has ceased to fall. The earth is covered with a brilliant white sheet, and overhead the wintry stars are shining out one by one in the deep blue vault. The girl begins to feel more hopeful, as the still frosty air cools her hot cheek, and the stars look down upon her with their silent greeting of peace.

“Glad tidings of great joy”—the Christmas message of nearly nineteen centuries ago—surely it cannot be that a heart-breaking grief is to come on them on this, of all nights in the year! A prayer is in her heart—on her lips—and even in that moment, as if in answer, there burst forth the most joyous of all sounds to Alice’s ear—their own village bells ringing a Merry Christmas peal! It had been understood that this was to be the signal of Bertie’s being found and safe. Louder and louder it comes, and eager congratulations are exchanged by the anxious watchers. Mrs. Chetwynd wants to fly to meet her boy, but is gently restrained by Mildred, who reminds her that his father must be with him. Nor is it long before a happy group are seen approaching.

There is Bertie (who has insisted on putting his injured foot to the ground lest his mother should be frightened by seeing him carried) bravely hopping along with the aid of his father’s strong arm faithful little Nettle trotting close at his side and Jack Brown, with whom the Squire has shaken hands and exchanged a “Merry Christmas” slouching behind—but whose is the tall figure on Bertie’s other side? Ah! cousin Mildred knows, and well is it perhaps that the growing darkness throws a friendly veil over the joyous blushes and the happy thankful tears that mark that meeting.

It was afterwards that his grief and sorrow came. When his mother’s turn came, and she opened the parcels on her table, for in the Sheafe house each of them had a separate present-table, after she had passed the little children’s she came to Asaph’s present to her. It was in quite a large box done up in a German newspaper. She opened it carefully, and lifted out a Bohemian coffee-pot, which Asaph had bought at the German woman’s shop in Shawmut avenue. Mrs. Sheafe eagerly expressed her delight, and her wonder that Asaph knew she wanted it. But alas! all her love could not hide the fact that the nose of the coffee-pot was broken at the end, and what was left was all in splinters.

Poor Asaph saw it as soon as she. And the great big tears would come to his manly eyes. He bent his head down on his mother’s shoulder, and the hot drops fell on her cheek. She kissed the poor boy, and told him she should never mind. It would pour quite as well, and she should use it every morning. She knew how many months of his allowance had gone for this coffee-pot. She remembered how much she had been pleased with Mrs. Henry’s; and she praised Asaph for remembering that so well.

“This is the joy of the present,” she said, “that my boy watches his mother’s wishes, and that he thinks of her. A chip more or less off the nose of the coffee-pot is nothing.”

And Asaph would not cheat the others out of their “good time.” And he pretended to be soothed. But, all the same, there was a great lump in his throat almost all that day.

When the children were going to church he walked with Isabel, and he told her how it all happened. He would not tell his mother, and he made Isabel promise not to tell. He had spent every cent of his money in buying his presents. He had them all in that big basket which they bought at the Pier. He was coming home after dark, on foot, because he could not pay his fare in the horse-car. All of a sudden a little German boy with a tall woman by him, stopped him, and said with a very droll accent, which Asaph imitated, “East Canton street,” and poked out a card on which was written, “Karl Shoninger, 723 East Canton street.”

“Belle, I was in despair. It was late; I was on Dwight street, and I led them to Shawmut avenue and tried to explain. Belle, they did not know one word of English except ‘East Canton street.’ They kept saying, ‘East Canton street,’ as a dog says ‘Bow-wow.’ I looked for an officer and could not find one. It snowed harder and harder. I was coward enough to think of shirking. But then I said, ‘Lie and cheat on Christmas eve, that you may lug home your Christmas presents; that is too mean.’ And I said very loud, ‘Kom hier.’ I guess that’s good German any way. And I dragged them to their old 723 East Canton street. It is a mile if it is an inch. I climbed up the snowy steps to read the number. But I slipped as I came down, and knocked my own basket off the step where it stood. That is how mamma’s coffee-pot came broken, I suppose; but all looked so steady in the basket that I never thought of it then. That’s how I came late to supper. But, Belle, don’t you ever tell mamma as long as you live.”

And Belle never did. She told me.

When the Christmas dances were half over; when they had acted Lochinvar and Lord Ullin’s Daughter, but before they acted Villekens and Johnny the Miller, supper was served in Mrs. Sheafe’s dining-room. All the best china was out. Grandmamma’s “Spode” was out, and the silver pitcher the hands gave papa on his fiftieth birthday; and Mrs. Sheafe’s wedding breakfast-set—all that was left of it; and Asaph’s coffee-pot held the place of honor. One wretched bit of broken ware had consented to be cemented in its place. But yet it was but a miserable nose, and the lump came into Asaph’s throat again as he looked at it. And he almost wished his mother had put it away so that he need not hear her tell uncle Eliakim the hateful story.

The lump was in his throat when he went to bed. But he fell asleep soon after. I must confess that there were a few wet spots on his pillow. His last thought was the memory that all his hoarded monthly allowances had gone for the purchase of a broken-nosed pitcher.

The two angels who watch his bedside saw this, and one of them said to the other, “Would you not tell him?” But the other said, “Wait a little longer.”

What the angels would not tell him I will tell you. For it happened that I was driving round in my sleigh that Christmas night, on the very snow which was falling, while Asaph was fumbling up the steps in East Canton street, and I stopped at a house not far from Boylston station as you turn into Lamartine street, and found myself in the midst of the drollest home festivity.

The father was sitting with two babies on his knee. The other children were delving in a trunk to find something which would stay in the bottom. The house-mother clearly did not know where anything was in the trunk or anywhere else. But a broad grin was on every face, and whatever was said was broken by ejaculations and occasional kisses.

At last the lost parcel revealed itself, and opened out into some balls for a Christmas-tree, which these honest people had brought all the way from Linz on the Danube, quite sure that no such wonders would be known in that far-off America.

There are many other tales to be printed in this volume, so that I must not tell you, as I should be glad to do, all the adventures that that house-mother and her three boys and her two girls and the twin babies had encountered as they came from Linz to join Hans Bergmann, the father of the seven and the husband of their mother.

He had come the year before. They had come now by the way of Antwerp, and had landed in Philadelphia. But the Schiller had made so short a run that, when they arrived, Hans Bergmann was not in Philadelphia to meet them. Of course the Frau Bergmann should have waited in Philadelphia as Hans Bergmann had bidden her. But, on the hint of a voluble woman who spoke pure Bohemian, whom she met on the pier—who knew just where he boarded in New York—she took her charge to New York, to find that he had left that boarding-house three months before. Still, eager to spend Christmas with him, she had hurried to Boston to ask his uncle where he was. She had arrived in Boston, with the snow-storm, the day before Christmas itself, having made an accidental detour by Bridgeport and Westfield. Happily for her, the boy Asaph had led her to uncle Karl’s lodgings just as uncle Karl was leaving them forever on his way to Chicago.

Happily for Hans Bergmann, uncle Karl had the wit to pile them all into a carriage and to send them to a friend of his at the Boylston station, bidding him keep them under lock and key.

Then to Hans Bergmann uncle Karl telegraphed: “Find your wife at Burr street, number 40, Boylston station.”

Then Hans Bergmann, who had been bullying every police station in New York to know where his family was, had taken the early train and had spent his Christmas in ploughing through snow-drifts to Boston.

And so it was, that, at nine on Christmas night, I saw the children in a Christmas party, not quite as well arranged, but quite as happy, as any I saw that day.

And all this came about because a kind Asaph Sheafe forgot himself on Christmas eve, and showed Frau Bergmann the way to East Canton street.

As it happened, I saw the diamond necklace that John Gilder gave his bride that night.

But it did not give so much pleasure as Asaph Sheafe’s Christmas present to the Bergmanns did.

And yet he never knew he gave it.