pulley dangling at its point, cracked, and rusted, and
abandoned, and no less cracked and abandoned, shot out from the second
floor a moss-covered platform that had been intended for the reception
of bales of stuffs that had never arrived. The mortar had, here and
there, been wrenched from between the bricks by savage weather and age,
and the doors, too, had shrunk before their united malignity. How such
a house had drifted to such a locality is unaccountable, unless--as is
often the case--some navigator of real estate had thought he descried a
port, where was only a shoal that left his venture high and dry among
newer and costlier craft.

However, the nearest approach it had made in the last twenty years or
so--so David said--to fulfilling its commercial place in the world was
in opening its doors to a gentleman in the carpentering line. This
gentleman, Mr. Jacob Tripple by name, occupied the ground floor, and all
around it were scattered evidences, in the shape of window-frames, and
wooden-horses, and props, and old lumber, of a thriving business. He,
with all his men, had departed long ago and left the place dark, and
still, and cold.

It had lain in this stupor of silence for more than an hour, waiting
against hope to be resuscitated by any stray echoes that should drop in
from the neighboring hubbub and waken it up, when it caught among its
bleak angles the cheery voice of David's Little Scout, and revived--as
some old men do under the charm of gentle words--to a more respectable
opinion of itself. So immediately it seemed refreshed, that if it were
possible for such a decrepit--not to say inanimate--old structure as
that even metaphorically to prick up its ears, it metaphorically did as
the sound of Dolly's--her proper name--cheery welcome home echoed round
it.

"Here we are once more, father," she cried, breaking away from him to
have the door open when he plodded up to it. "Once more, and a welcome
home, and a merry Christmas to you!"

"Always on duty, Little Scout! Always on duty!" he called after her.
(The wind was keen and drew water to his eyes again, and again he
brushed it away.) "Always on duty," he went on repeating, with a doleful
effort at cheerfulness.

She was up-stairs by that time, and, opening the door above, had called
in, "Here's father!" then ran back to meet him, which she did at the
door below.

What these unusual proceedings meant, David Dubbs might have guessed or
might have known