ssers-by who came within range was taken with an extra shiver in
which the vision of wife and little ones waiting at home for his
coming was snuffed out, as he dropped in to brace up. The lights were
long out when the silent streets reechoed his unsteady steps toward
home, where the Christmas welcome had turned to dread.

But in this twilight hour they burned brightly yet, trying hard to
pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where
the lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of
brightness across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses
flattened against the window. The warmth inside, and the lights, had
made little islands of clear space on the frosty pane, affording
glimpses of the wealth within, of the piles of smoked herring, of
golden cheese, of sliced bacon and generous, fat-bellied hams; of the
rows of odd-shaped bottles and jars on the shelves that held there was
no telling what good things, only it was certain that they must be
good from the looks of them.

And the heavenly smell of spices and things that reached the boys
through the open door each time the tinkling bell announced the coming
or going of a customer! Better than all, back there on the top shelf
the stacks of square honey-cakes, with their frosty coats of sugar,
tied in bundles with strips of blue paper.

The wind blew straight through the patched and threadbare jackets of
the lads as they crept closer to the window, struggling hard by
breathing on the pane to make their peep-holes bigger, to take in the
whole of the big cake with the almonds set in; but they did not heed
it.

"Jim!" piped the smaller of the two, after a longer stare than usual;
"hey, Jim! them's Sante Claus's. See 'em?"

"Sante Claus!" snorted the other, scornfully, applying his eye to the
clear spot on the pane. "There ain't no ole duffer like dat. Them's
honey-cakes. Me 'n' Tom had a bite o' one wunst."

"There ain't no Sante Claus?" retorted the smaller shaver, hotly, at
his peep-hole. "There is, too. I seen him myself when he cum to our
alley last--"

"What's youse kids a-scrappin' fur?" broke in a strange voice.

Another boy, bigger, but dirtier and tougher looking than either of
the two, had come up behind them unobserved. He carried an armful of
unsold "extras" under one arm. The other was buried to the elbow in
the pocket of his ragged trousers.

The "kids" knew him, evidently, and the smallest eagerly accepted him