usual, at all the familiar gates which were now
closed to him, and look up at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it
cost the neighbors a pang to shut their doors and their hearts, and let
Patrasche draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for
they desired to please Baas Cogez.

Noel was close at hand.

The weather was very wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep, and the
ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this
season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest
dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared
saints and gilded Jesus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on
the horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup-pot sang and
smoked over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing
maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and
from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for one night in the week
before the Christmas Day, death entered there, and took away from life
forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known of life aught save its
poverty and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any
movement except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a
gentle word; and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in
it; they mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his
sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement,
unutterable solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had
long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a
hand in their defence, but he had loved them well; his smile had always
welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be
comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that
held his body to the nameless grave by the little gray church. They were
his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon
earth,--the young boy and the old dog.

"Surely, he will relent now and let the poor lad come hither?" thought
the miller's wife, glancing at her husband where he smoked by the hearth.

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his heart, and would not
unbar his door as the little, humble funeral went by. "The boy is a
beggar," he said to himself: "he shall not be about Alois."

The woman dared not say anything aloud, but when the grave was closed
an