stmas shopping and instructed
the bank to send on the fifteenth of December this sum for her personal
use.

"Dear, dear Daddy! He forgot nothing," sobbed Janice, when she read
this note, and kissed the check which seemed to have come warm from her
father's hand. "Whatever shall I do all through my life long without
him, if he never comes back?"

Christmas Eve came. The clouds had been gathering above the higher
peaks of the Green Mountains all day, and, as evening dropped, the snow
began falling.

Janice and Marty went down town together after supper. Even Poketown
showed some special light and life at this season. Dusty store windows
were rejuvenated; candles, and trees, and tinsel, and wreathes
blossomed all along High Street. Janice was proud to know that the
brightest windows, and the most tastefully dressed, were Hopewell
Drugg's. And in the middle of the biggest window of Drugg's store was
a beautiful wax doll, which she and Miss 'Rill had themselves dressed.
On Christmas morning that doll was to be found by Lottie Drugg, fast
asleep with its head on the blind child's own pillow!

Janice had to run around just to take a last peek at the window and the
doll, while Marty went to the post office for the evening mail. Papers
and magazines were due in that mail for the reading-room; and, despite
the fact that the snow was falling more heavily every minute, there
would be some of the "regulars" in the reading-room, glad to see the
papers.

Janice had turned her own subscription for the New York daily over to
the reading-room association; and when she wanted to read the New York
paper herself, she went to the files to look at it. Weeks had passed
now since there had been anything printed about that district in
Chihuahua where her father's mine was located.

Coming back, down the hill from Drugg's, Janice saw that Marty had not
gone at once into the reading-room and lit the lamps. Her cousin was
standing in the light of the drug-store window, a bundle of papers and
magazines under his arm, and one paper spread before his eyes. He
seemed to be reading eagerly.

"Hey, Marty! come on in and read! It's awful cold out here!" she
shouted to him, shaking the latch of the reading-room door with her
mittened hand.

Marty, roused, looked up guiltily, and thrust the quickly folded paper
into the breast of his jacket. "Aw, I'm comin'," he said.

But when he came to open the door Janice noticed that he seemed