eble light. The other
followed behind through the silent house. They were very impatient and
eager, but when they reached the door of the sitting-room they stopped,
for they saw that another child was before them.

It was a delicate little creature, sitting in her white night gown, with
two rumpled funny braids falling down her back, and she seemed to be
weeping. As they watched, she arose, and putting out one slender
finger as a child does when she counts, she made sure over and over
again--three sad times--that there were only two stockings and two piles
of toys! Only those and no more.

The little figure looked so familiar that the boys started toward it,
but just then, putting up her arm and bowing her face in it, as Elsbeth
had been used to do when she wept or was offended, the little thing
glided away and went out. That's what the boys said. It went out as a
candle goes out.

They ran and woke their parents with the tale, and all the house was
searched in a wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and tumult! But
nothing was found. For nights they watched. But there was only the
silent house. Only the empty rooms. They told the boys they must have
been mistaken. But the boys shook their heads.

"We know our Elsbeth," said they. "It was our Elsbeth, cryin' 'cause she
hadn't no stockin' an' no toys, and we would have given her all ours,
only she went out--jus' went out!"

Alack!

The next Christmas I helped with the little festival. It was none of
my affair, but I asked to help, and they let me, and when we were all
through there were three stockings and three piles of toys, and in the
largest one was all the things that I could think of that my dear child
would love. I locked the boys' chamber that night, and I slept on the
divan in the parlor off the sitting-room. I slept but little, and the
night was very still--so windless and white and still that I think I
must have heard the slightest noise. Yet I heard none. Had I been in my
grave I think my ears would not have remained more unsaluted.

Yet when daylight came and I went to unlock the boys' bedchamber door,
I saw that the stocking and all the treasures which I had bought for my
little godchild were gone. There was not a vestige of them remaining!

Of course we told the boys nothing. As for me, after dinner I went home
and buried myself once more in my history, and so interested was I that
midnight came without my knowing it. I should not have looked up at