kindly as he passed and he
returned the greetings half absently. Before opening the door, the old
man stopped to give his woolen muffler one more turn around his neck.

"Purty cold snap, this," he remarked to the company in general. "Looks
as if we'd have snow 'fore mornin' and a white Christmas after all.
Good-night, Mis' Bascomb; good-night boys. A merry Christmas to you
all!" and Tony stepped out into the frosty air of the December evening.

He sighed again as he turned up over the hill to the left and started
for home. It had been a long, cold walk down to the village, and it
would be equally long and even colder on the way back, for a sharp wind
was blowing directly in his face. It was a bad night for an old man like
Tony to be abroad and he was almost sorry that he had ventured out. But
there was his promise to Martha; it would never do to break that. Martha
had always been of a more hopeful turn of mind than he, anyway. While
she was still alive she had imparted to him the same spirit of trust and
hopefulness which shone in her steady gray eyes, but since God had taken
Martha and left him all alone in the world of care and trouble, life had
been hard indeed.

He had promised Martha never to omit the daily visit to the post-office
to inquire for the letter which, thus far, had failed to arrive. Martha
had been so sure that Sallie would write to them some day; Sallie,
their handsome, wilful daughter, who had passed out of their lives
nearly fifteen years before. He never blamed Sallie for wanting to leave
them; what could a tiny village like this offer to one as clever, as
pretty, as ambitious as Sallie had been? The neighbors had said many
unkind things of Sallie but he heeded them not. They had called her
vain, idle and silly; they said the folks at the big house had spoiled
her and put notions into her head. They told him he did a foolish thing
when he allowed her to go as maid to the lady of the big house over on
the shores of the lake, and to go down to the city with the family when
they moved home in the autumn. To tell the truth, poor Tony had little
voice in the matter. Sallie, as usual, had taken affairs into her own
hands and decided for herself.

Nearly fifteen years! It was a long, long time; and never a word from
the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at
first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic
hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was