"you must cheer up. Here, sit in
this chair the biggest one; so--beside the fire. Let us stir it to a
blaze; more wood, that's better. And listen, good old Friend, to the
wind outside--almost a Christmas wind, is it not? Merry and boisterous
enough, for all the evil times it stirs among."

Old Christmas seated himself beside the fire, his hands outstretched
towards the flames. Something of his old-time cheeriness seemed to
flicker across his features as he warmed himself at the blaze.

"That's better," he murmured. "I was cold, sir, cold, chilled to the
bone. Of old I never felt it so; no matter what the wind, the world
seemed warm about me. Why is it not so now?"

"You see," said Time, speaking low in a whisper for my ear alone, "how
sunk and broken he is? Will you not help?"

"Gladly," I answered, "if I can."

"All can," said Father Time, "every one of us."

Meantime Christmas had turned towards me a questioning eye, in which,
however, there seemed to revive some little gleam of merriment.

"Have you, perhaps," he asked half timidly, "schnapps?"

"Schnapps?" I repeated.

"Ay, schnapps. A glass of it to drink your health might warm my heart
again, I think."

"Ah," I said, "something to drink?"

"His one failing," whispered Time, "if it is one. Forgive it him. He was
used to it for centuries. Give it him if you have it."

"I keep a little in the house," I said reluctantly perhaps, "in case of
illness."

"Tut, tut," said Father Time, as something as near as could be to a
smile passed over his shadowy face. "In case of illness! They used to
say that in ancient Babylon. Here, let me pour it for him. Drink, Father
Christmas, drink!"

Marvellous it was to see the old man smack his lips as he drank his
glass of liquor neat after the fashion of old Norway.

Marvellous, too, to see the way in which, with the warmth of the fire
and the generous glow of the spirits, his face changed and brightened
till the old-time cheerfulness beamed again upon it.

He looked about him, as it were, with a new and growing interest.

"A pleasant room," he said. "And what better, sir, than the wind without
and a brave fire within!"

Then his eye fell upon the mantelpiece, where lay among the litter of
books and pipes a little toy horse.

"Ah," said Father Christmas almost gayly, "children in the house!"

"One," I answered, "the sweetest boy in all the world."

"I'll be bound he is!" said Father Christmas and he broke now i