a hand
indefinitely up at the night.

"If it was clear," he said, "you could see Baldpate Mountain, over
yonder, looking down on the Falls, sort of keeping an eye on us to make
sure we don't get reckless. And half-way up you'd see Baldpate Inn,
black and peaceful and winter-y. Just follow this street to the third
corner, and turn to your left. Elijah lives in a little house back among
the trees a mile out--there's a gate you'll sure hear creaking on a
night like this."

Billy Magee thanked him, and gathering up his two bags, walked up "Main
Street." A dreary forbidding building at the first corner bore the sign
"Commercial House". Under the white gaslight in the office window three
born pessimists slouched low in hotel chairs, gazing sourly out at the
storm.

"Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more to-day,"

hummed Mr. Magee cynically under his breath, and glanced up at the
solitary up-stairs window that gleamed yellow in the night.

At a corner on which stood a little shop that advertised "Groceries and
Provisions" he paused.

"Let me see," he pondered. "The lights will be turned off, of course.
Candles. And a little something for the inner man, in case it's the
closed season for cooks."

He went inside, where a weary old woman served him.

"What sort of candles?" she inquired, with the air of one who had an
infinite variety in stock. Mr. Magee remembered that Christmas was near.

"For a Christmas tree," he explained. He asked for two hundred.

"I've only got forty," the woman said. "What's this tree for--the
Orphans' Home?"

With the added burden of a package containing his purchases in the tiny
store, Mr. Magee emerged and continued his journey through the stinging
snow. Upper Asquewan Falls on its way home for supper flitted past him
in the silvery darkness. He saw in the lighted windows of many of the
houses the green wreath of Christmas cheer. Finally the houses became
infrequent, and he struck out on an uneven road that wound upward. Once
he heard a dog's faint bark. Then a carriage lurched by him, and a
strong voice cursed the roughness of the road. Mr. Magee half smiled to
himself as he strode on.

"Don Quixote, my boy," he muttered, "I know how you felt when you moved
on the windmills."

It was not the whir of windmills but the creak of a gate in the storm
that brought Mr. Magee at last to a stop. He walked gladly up the path
to Elijah Quimby's door.

In answer to Billy Magee's ga