h sorrow to his mother. So strong and so handy on the
wagon. Old 'Liza loved him like a brother and minded him even better
than she did himself. If he only had him now, they could face the
winter and the bad times, and pull through. But things never had gone
right since he left. He didn't know, Joe thought humbly as he jogged
along over the rough road, but he had been a little hard on the lad.
Boys wanted a chance once in a while. All work and no play was not for
them. Likely he had forgotten he was a boy once himself. But Jim was
such a big lad, 'most like a man. He took after his mother more than
the rest. She had been proud, too, when she was a girl. He wished he
hadn't been hasty that time they had words about those boxes at the
store. Anyway, it turned out that it wasn't Jim's fault. But he was
gone that night, and try as they might to find him, they never had
word of him since. And Joe sighed again more heavily than before.

Old 'Liza shied at something in the road, and Joe took a firmer hold
on the reins. It turned his thoughts to the horse. She was getting
old, too, and not as handy as she was. He noticed that she was getting
winded with a heavy load. It was well on to ten years she had been
their capital and the breadwinner of the house. Sometimes he thought
that she missed Jim. If she was to leave them now, he wouldn't know
what to do, for he couldn't raise the money to buy another horse
nohow, as things were. Poor old 'Liza! He stroked her gray coat
musingly with the point of his whip as he thought of their old
friendship. The horse pointed one ear back toward her master and
neighed gently, as if to assure him that she was all right.

Suddenly she stumbled. Joe pulled her up in time, and throwing the
reins over her back, got down to see what it was. An old horseshoe,
and in the dust beside it a new silver quarter. He picked both up and
put the shoe in the wagon.

"They say it is luck," he mused, "finding horse-iron and money. Maybe
it's my Christmas. Get up, 'Liza!" And he drove off to the ferry.

The glare of a thousand gas lamps had chased the sunset out of the
western sky, when Joe drove home through the city's streets. Between
their straight, mile-long rows surged the busy life of the coming
holiday. In front of every grocery store was a grove of fragrant
Christmas trees waiting to be fitted into little green stands with
fairy fences. Within, customers were bargaining, chatting, and
bantering the busy