In his excitement when he felt the door move he swung it outward sharply. It had not been used for some time evidently and the hinges creaked. He checked the door and listened again. Was he to be balked after so much success? He was greatly relieved at the absence of sound. It was quite dark in the room. He could see nothing but the safe. He reached his hand in and discovered it was filled with bulky articles covered with some kind of cloth, silver evidently.
He decided that he must have a look and again he switched on the light. Yes, his surmise had been correct. The safe was filled with silver. There was a small steel drawer in the middle of it. He had a broad bladed jack-knife in his pocket and at the risk of snapping the blade he forced the lock and drew out the drawer. It was filled with papers. He lifted the first one and stood staring at it in astonishment, for it was an envelope which bore his name, written by a hand which had long since mouldered away in the dust of a grave.
V
Before he could open the envelope, there broke on his ear a still small voice, not that of conscience, not that of God; the voice of a child—but does not God speak perhaps as often through the lips of childhood as in any other way—and conscience, too?
“Are you Santa Claus?” the voice whispered in his ear.
“Crackerjack” dropped the paper and turned like a flash, knife upraised in his clenched hand, to confront a very little girl and a still smaller boy staring at him in open-eyed astonishment, an astonishment which was without any vestige of alarm. He looked down at the two and they looked up at him, equal bewilderment on both sides.
“I sought dat Santy Claus tame down de chimney,” said the younger of the twain, whose pajamas bespoke the nascent man.
“In all the books he has a long white beard. Where’s yours?” asked the coming woman.
This innocent question no less than the unaffected simplicity and sincerity of the questioner overpowered “Crackerjack.” He sank back into a convenient chair and stared at the imperturbable pair. There was a strange and wonderful likeness in the sweet-faced golden-haired little girl before him to the worn, haggard, and ill-clad little girl who lay shivering in the mean bed in the upper room where God was not—or so he fancied.
“You’re a little girl, aren’t you?” he whispered.