as umpire.

"It's Jim w'at says there ain't no Sante Claus, and I seen him--"

"Jim!" demanded the elder ragamuffin, sternly, looking hard at the
culprit; "Jim! yere a chump! No Sante Claus? What're ye givin' us?
Now, watch me!"

With utter amazement the boys saw him disappear through the door under
the tinkling bell into the charmed precincts of smoked herring, jam,
and honey-cakes. Petrified at their peep-holes, they watched him, in
the veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with the fir-branch,
fish out five battered pennies from the depths of his pocket and pass
them over to the woman behind the jars, in exchange for one of the
bundles of honey-cakes tied with blue. As if in a dream they saw him
issue forth with the coveted prize.

"There, kid!" he said, holding out the two fattest and whitest cakes
to Santa Claus's champion; "there's yer Christmas. Run along, now, to
yer barracks; and you, Jim, here's one for you, though yer don't
desarve it. Mind ye let the kid alone."

"This one'll have to do for me grub, I guess. I ain't sold me
'Newses,' and the ole man'll kick if I bring 'em home."

Before the shuffling feet of the ragamuffins hurrying homeward had
turned the corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy's supper was
smothered in a yell of "Extree!" as he shot across the street to
intercept a passing stranger.

As the evening wore on, it grew rawer and more blustering still.
Flakes of dry snow that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the
curb-lines, the shutters, and the door-steps of the tenements with
gathering white, were borne up on the storm from the water. To the
right and left stretched endless streets between the towering
barracks, as beneath frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glowing
eyes that revealed the watch-fires within--a mighty city of
cave-dwellers held in the thraldom of poverty and want.

Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. Saloon doors were slamming,
and bare-legged urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls close
for shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the
discordant strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of
the poor. Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a
scant harvest of pennies for Christmas cheer from the windows opening
on the back yard. Against more than one pane showed the bald outline
of a forlorn little Christmas tree, some stray branch of a hemlock
picked up at the grocer's and set in a pail for "the