The burgomaster's face grew cold and stern. Black Hans was an old offender. As a magistrate the burgomaster had given him a chance twice, but he was a confirmed poacher, who would rather lie out in the woods through a cold winter's night on the chance of getting a deer, and of getting into jail, too, than work a day at good wages, clever blacksmith though he was. Now he had been caught red-handed, and would be made to suffer for it. The burgomaster bent lowering brows upon the prisoner.
"You couldn't keep from stealing the count's deer, not even at Christmas," he said harshly.
The poacher looked up. Rough as he was, he was not a bad-looking fellow. The free, if lawless, life he led was in his face and bearing.
"The deer is wild. They're for the man as can take 'em, if the count do claim 'em," he said doggedly, and halted, as with a sudden thought. Something had entered with him and the forester, and was even then filling the room with a suggestion of good cheer to come. It was the smell of the Yule goose roasting in the burgomaster's kitchen. Black Hans looked straight into the eye of his inquisitor.
"I didn't have none—for me young ones," he added. It was not said defiantly, but as a mere statement of fact.
An angry reply rose to the official's lip, but he checked himself.
"Take him to the lock-up," he ordered shortly, and the forester went out with his charge.
The burgomaster heard the outer door close behind them, and turned wearily to his mail. The count had been greatly wrought up over the depredations of Black Hans and his kind, and would insist on an example being made of him. Bad blood always came of these cases, for the game law was not well thought of in the land in these democratic days. There lingered yet resentfully the recollection of the days not so long since when to take "the king's deer" brought a man to the block, or to the treadmill for life. And the family of this fellow Black Hans, what was to become of them? The burgomaster's gaze wandered abstractedly over the envelop he was opening and rested on an unfamiliar stamp. He held it up and took a closer look. Oh, yes; the new Christmas stamp. He knew it well enough, with its design of the great sanatorium for tubercular children that had been built out of the proceeds of other years' sales. It was a pretty picture, and a worthy cause. In all Denmark there was none that so laid hold of the popular fancy. It was the word "Yule," with its magic, that did it. There was no other inscription on the stamp, and none was needed.
As his glance dwelt upon it, a curious change came over the picture. It was no longer the great white house that he saw, with its many bright lights, but a wretched hut, with a crooked chimney, and rags stopping a broken pane in its only window. The dull glow of a tallow dip struggled through the grime that lay thick upon the unbroken panes. Against one the face of a child was pressed, a poor, pinched face that spoke of cold and hunger and weary waiting for some one who was always late. Something that was very much like real pain made the burgomaster wince as the words of Black Hans came back to him, "I didn't have none—for me young ones."
He shook his head impatiently. Why, then, did he not work for them, instead of laying it up against his betters?