"Is we any poorer now, mamma?"
"Oh! yes, much poorer. He would never notice us at all now."
Jack Dawson detected a tremor of sadness in the widow's voice as she uttered the last words, and he wiped a suspicious dampness from his eyes.
"Where's our clean stockings, mamma? I'm going to hang mine up anyhow; maybe he will come like he did before, just because we try to be good children," said Totty.
"It will be no use, my darling, I am sure he will not come," and tears gathered in the mother's eyes as she thought of her empty purse.
"I don't care, I'm going to try, anyhow. Please get one of my stockings, mamma."
Jack Dawson's generous heart swelled until it seemed bursting from his bosom. He heard the patter of little bare feet upon the cabin floor as Totty ran about hunting hers and Benny's stockings, and after she had hung them up, heard her sweet voice again as she wondered over and over if Santa really would forget them. He heard the mother, in a choking voice; tell her treasures to get ready for bed; heard them lisp their childish prayers, the little girl concluding: "And, O, Lord! please tell good Santa Claus that we are very poor; but that we love him as much as rich children do, for dear Jesus' sake—Amen!"
After they were in bed, through a small rent in the plain white curtain he saw the widow sitting before the fire, her face buried in her hands, and weeping bitterly.
On a peg, just over the fire-place, hung two little patched and faded stockings, and then he could stand it no longer. He softly moved away from the window to the rear of the cabin, where some objects fluttering in the wind met his eye. Among these he searched until he found a little blue stocking which he removed from the line, folded tenderly, and placed in his overcoat pocket, and then set out for the main street of the camp. He entered Harry Hawk's gambling hall, the largest in the place, where a host of miners and gamblers were at play. Jack was well known in the camp, and when he got up on a chair and called for attention, the hum of voices and clicking of ivory checks suddenly ceased. Then in an earnest voice he told what he had seen and heard, repeating every word of the conversation between the mother and her children. In conclusion he said:
"Boys, I think I know you, every one of you, an' I know jist what kind o' metal yer made of. I've an idee that Santy Claus knows jist whar thet cabin's sitiwated, an' I've an idee he'll find it afore mornin'. Hyar's one of the little gal's stock'n's thet I hooked off'n the line. The daddy o' them little ones was a good, hard-working miner, an' he crossed the range in the line o' duty, jist as any one of us is liable to do in our dangerous business. Hyar goes a twenty-dollar piece right down in the toe, and hyar I lay the stockin' on this card table—now chip in much or little, as ye kin afford."