Tom had got the key and begun to try it. Santa Claus had
winked at him with a snaring eye, like that of his aunt when she
had sugar in her pocket, and Tom thought it very foolish. The boy
had even felt of his greatcoat and got a good look at his boots and
trousers. Moreover, when he put his pipe away, Tom saw him take a
chew of tobacco--an abhorrent thing if he were to believe his
mother.

"Mother," said he, "I never knew Santa Claus chewed tobacco."

"Well, mebbe he was Santa Claus's hired man," said she.

"Might 'a' had the toothache," Paul suggested, for Lew Allen, who
worked for them in the summer time, had an habitual toothache,
relieved many times a day by chewing tobacco.

Tom sat looking into the fire a moment.

Then he spoke of a matter Paul and he had discussed secretly.

"Joe Bellus he tol' me Santa Claus was only somebody rigged up t'
fool folks, an' hadn't no reindeers at all."

The mother turned away, her wits groping for an answer.

"Hadn't ought 'a' told mother, Tom," said Paul, with a little
quiver of reproach and pity. "'Tain't so, anyway--we know 'tain't
so."

He was looking into his mother's face.

"Tain't so," Paul repeated with unshaken confidence.

"Mus'n't believe all ye hear," said the widow, who now turned to
the doubting Thomas.

And that very moment Tom was come to the last gate of childhood,
whereon are the black and necessary words, "Mus'n't believe all ye
hear."

The boys in their new boots were on the track of a painter. They
treed him, presently, at the foot of the stairs.

"How'll we kill him?" one of them inquired.

"Just walk around the tree once," said the mother, "an' you'll
scare him to death. Why don't ye grease your boots?"

"'Fraid it'll take the screak out of 'em," said Paul, looking down
thoughtfully at his own pair.

"Well," said she, "you'll have me treed if you keep on. No hunter
would have boots like that. A loud foot makes a still gun."

That was her unfailing method of control--the appeal to
intelligence. Polly sat singing, thoughtfully, the locket in her
hand. She had kissed the sacred thing and hung it by a ribbon to
her neck and bathed her eyes in the golden light of it and begun to
feel the subtle pathos in its odd message. She was thinking of the
handsome boy who came along that far May-day with the drove, and
who lately had returned to be her teacher at Linley School. Now,
he had so much dignity and learning, she liked him not h