ter, for whom you work, may have sent you a Christmas basket there
is not one shred of anything to link him up with us. Mr. McGregor, it
is true, was in Davis and Coulter's employ many years; but he was only
one of many hundred workmen and scarcely knew old Mr. Coulter by sight.
Since the old gentleman has died and the son has come into the firm the
last thread that bound us to the company has been snapped. Old Mr.
Coulter is gone, and McGregor, with his twenty-five years of service in
the mills, is forgotten. As for this young John Coulter who has taken
his father's place--I've never set eyes on him."

"But why should the name be on each of the baskets?" Hal insisted,
still unwilling to surrender the idea he cherished.

"Ask the market man, laddie. It's a question for him. My notion is that
in the rush somebody put it there by mistake," replied Carl's mother.
"The marvel isn't that Coulter was written on the baskets; the marvel
is that some word in Choctaw or Egyptian wasn't on 'em. Why, if you'd
seen those clerks down at the store going round as if their heads were
clean off their bodies you wouldn't wonder queer things were written on
the hampers we got. I'm amazed they arrived at all."

"But somebody sent them," Hal affirmed.

"I'll join you there! Somebody sent them," nodded Mrs. McGregor. "Up to
that point your arguments are perfectly logical. Those baskets never
came of themselves. But as for Mr. John Coulter being their giver--why,
you are mad as a March hare to think it for a moment. What would he be
doing with all his college education and his years of study in Europe
sending the likes of us Christmas presents? He has plenty of presents
to give in his own family, I guess."

"Well, maybe you're right and the name only happened," Hal conceded.
"Still, it's queer, isn't it? Queer that the name should be Coulter, I
mean."

"It's a coincidence for you because you chance to work for him; but to
us it means nothing."

"Yes, I can see that now," Hal agreed. "Then I guess there is nothing
left before going home but to see Carlie carry out his little wager."

"My wager?" Carl repeated.

"You were going to eat your head if the name of Coulter was on the
bottom of this basket, remember."

"Oh!" Carl grinned a sickly grin.

"Going to default?"

"No, not default--merely postpone the ceremony," Carl declared.

"Oh, you old crawler! Well, if you are going to put off the show I must
be getting home or Mother wi