ade him hush.

"Er never had nuthin' done to him, neither," the boy continued,
rocking vigorously in his little chair.

"Mustn't speak so of Christ," the mother added.

"Wal," said Paul, rising, "I guess I'll hang up my stockin's."

"One'll do, Paul," said his sister Polly, with a knowing air.

"No, 'twon't," the boy insisted. "They ain't half 's big as yours.
I'm goin' t' try it, anyway, an' see what he'll do to 'em."

He drew off his stockings and pinned them carefully to the braces
on the back of a chair.

"Well, my son," said Mrs. Vaughn, looking over the top of her
paper, "it's bad weather; Santa Claus may not be able to get here."

"Oh, yes, he can," said the boy, confidently, but with a little
quiver of alarm in his voice. "I'm sure he'll come. He has a team
of reindeers. 'An' the deeper the snow the faster they go.'"

Soon the others bared their feet and hung their stockings on four
chairs in a row beside the first.

Then they all got on the bed in the corner and pulled a quilt over
them to wait for Santa Claus. The mother went on with her reading
as they chattered.

Sleep hushed them presently. But for the crackling of the fire,
and the push and whistle of the wind, that room had become as a
peaceful, silent cave under the storm.

The widow rose stealthily and opened a bureau drawer. The row of
limp stockings began to look cheerful and animated. Little
packages fell to their toes, and the shortest began to reach for
the floor. But while they were fat in the foot they were still
very lean in the leg.

Her apron empty, Mrs. Vaughn took her knitting to the fire, and
before she began to ply the needles, looked thoughtfully at her
hands. They had been soft and shapely before the days of toil. A
frail but comely woman she was, with pale face, and dark eyes, and
hair prematurely white.

She had come west--a girl of nineteen--with her young husband, full
of high hopes. That was twenty-one years ago, and the new land had
poorly kept its promise.

And the children--"How many have you?" a caller had once inquired.
"Listen," said she, "hear 'em, an' you'd say there were fifteen,
but count 'em an' they're only four."

The low, weathered house and sixty acres were mortgaged. Even the
wilderness had not wholly signed off its claim. Every year it
exacted tribute, the foxes taking a share of her poultry, and the
wild deer feeding on her grain.

A little beggar of a dog, that now lay in the f