eed find no cruelty
in a merciful shot that spelled no pain and that by stopping
him assured that gentler, weaker things will live on and on.

_And he_ will be glad, too, as not _only_ is he forever
freed from cold and hunger and stark fear, but his is to be
a tender office.

Will you lay it at your bedside, that each night it may
cushion your last step at slumbertime, and each morning
soften the first contact between the vistas of dreamland and
the less yielding surfaces of life to which we wake.

So even the things of the wild are made to serve. To
serve--is that not the law of man?

My part in it? But little: none other than I will have
touched it till it reaches your dear hands. I shaped it,
wrought to preserve its beauties that it might give you
pleasure.

To give pleasure--is that not the law of love?

A very, very Merry Christmas!

DICK.

He sent his gift, at about nine o'clock. In gay mood, he wandered
about the great house: entered the kitchen where Fanny was singeing
the Christmas turkey: returned to the living room to throw a fresh log
in the wide fireplace. His mood was too expansive for indoors. He
donned short coat and thick cap, but as he passed out of the gate a
scared little lad, a foreigner, rushed up breathlessly and begged him
to come--trouble was brewing on the southside.

His questions elicited meager information. Excited, the lad relapsed
so often into his native tongue that Terry could make nothing of his
tale.

Hand in hand they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge
and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose
in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock
and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of
Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the
reefered figure that smiled up at him through the falling flakes,
Tony's dark scowl faded as he reached out his powerful hands and with
a joyous shout fairly lifted Terry into the house.

Terry laughed as the gaudily dressed occupants of the room crowded
around him, and greeted most of the score of swarthy men and women by
name. Tony masterfully stripped him of his overcoat and cap and placed
them in the kitchen from which emanated odors of strange things
cooking. The room was stifling with heat and with s