"I have been cruel to the lad," he murmured at length. "I deserve not to have good at his hands."
Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father, and nestled against him her curly, fair head.
"Nello may come here again, father?" she whispered. "He may come to- morrow, as he used to do?"
The miller pressed her in his arms. His hard, sunburned face was pale and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child. "He shall bide here on Christmas day and any other day he will. In my greed I sinned, and the Lord chastened me. God helping me, I will make amends to the boy—I will make amends."
When the supper smoked on the board and the voices were loudest and gladdest, and the Christ child brought choicest gifts to Alois, Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was unlatched by a careless newcomer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired limbs would bear him, sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He had only one thought—to follow Nello.
Snow had fallen freshly all evening long. It was now nearly ten o'clock. The trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche long and arduous labor to discover any scent which could guide him in pursuit. When at last he found it, it was lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost, and again recovered a hundred times and more. It was all quite dark in the town. Now and then some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices and house shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns, chanting drinking songs. The streets were all white with ice, and high walls and roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot of the wind down the passages as it tossed the creaking signs.
So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold of the track he followed. But he kept on his way though the cold pierced him to the bone and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's tooth. But he kept on his way—a poor, gaunt, shivering, drooping thing—in the frozen darkness, that no one pitied as he went—and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the heart of the burg and up to the steps of the great cathedral.
"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche. He could not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.
The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of the snow upon the dark stone floor.
By that slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided through the intense silence, through the immensity of the vaulted space—guided straight to the gates of the chancel—and stretched there upon the stones, he found Nello. He crept up noiselessly and touched the face of the boy.