. But the
child's feet, blue in the cold of that December night, were sad to see.

[Illustration]

The scholars, so well clothed and shod for the winter, passed heedlessly
before the unknown child. One of them, even, the son of one of the
principal men in the village, looked at the waif with an expression in
which could be seen all the scorn of the rich for the poor, the well-fed
for the hungry.

But little Wolff, coming the last out of the church, stopped, full of
compassion, before the beautiful sleeping infant.

"Alas!" said the orphan to himself, "it is too bad: this poor little one
going barefoot in such bad weather. But what is worse than all, he has
not to-night even a boot or a wooden shoe to leave before him while he
sleeps, so that the Christ-child could put something there to comfort
him in his misery."

And, carried away by the goodness of his heart, little Wolff took off
the wooden shoe from his right foot, and laid it in front of the
sleeping child; and then, as best he could, limping along on his poor
blistered foot and dragging his sock through the snow, he went back to
his aunt's.

"Look at the worthless fellow!" cried his aunt, full of anger at his
return without one of his shoes. "What have you done with your wooden
shoe, little wretch?"

Little Wolff did not know how to deceive, and although he was shaking
with terror at seeing the gray hairs bristle up on the nose of the angry
woman, he tried to stammer out some account of his adventure.

But the old woman burst into a frightful peal of laughter.

"Ah, monsieur takes off his shoes for beggars! Ah, monsieur gives away
his wooden shoe to a barefoot! That is something new for example! Ah,
well, since that is so, I am going to put the wooden shoe which you have
left in the chimney, and I promise you the Christ-child will leave there
to-night something to whip you with in the morning. And you shall pass
the day to-morrow on dry bread and water. We will see if next time you
give away your shoes to the first vagabond that comes."

And the wicked woman, after having given the poor boy a couple of slaps,
made him climb up to his bed in the attic. Grieved to the heart, the
child went to bed in the dark, and soon went to sleep on his pillow
steeped with tears.

But on the morrow morning, when the old woman, awakened by the cold and
shaken by her cough, went down stairs--oh, wonderful sight!--she saw the
great chimney full of beautiful playthings,