Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles and bulky toys. In a silence broken only by their breathing they quickly bestowed the gifts —some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place, others beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel.
Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so that they could speak. The old man took up his own candle from a stand against the wall.
"The little one is like her," he said.
"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the handsomest. Never in my born days did I see so beautiful a boy."
"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a sudden savage roughness in the voice, a sterner set to the shaven upper lip and straight mouth, though he still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, godless fiddle-player that took her away from me. What a mercy of God's he'll never see her again—she with the saved and he—what a reckoning for him when he goes!"
"But he was not bad to let you take them."
"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin tears raining down his face, when my own eyes were dry!"
"How good if you can leave them both in the church, preaching the word where you preached it so many years!"
"I misdoubt the father's blood in them—at least, in the older. But it's late. Good night, Clytie—a good Christmas to you."
"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!"