It was midnight; and the fire had long been covered up, and John Krinken and his wife were fast asleep, and little Carl was in the midst of the hard bed and his sweet dreams as before. The stocking hung by the side of the fire-place, as still as if it had never walked about in its life, and not a sound could be heard but the beat of the surf upon the shore and an occasional sigh from the wind; for the wind is always melancholy at Christmas.
Once or twice an old rat had peeped cautiously out of his hole, and seeing nobody, had crossed the floor and sat down in front of the stocking, which his sharp nose immediately pointed out to him. But though he could smell the apples plain enough, he was afraid that long thing might hold a trap as well; and so he did nothing but smell and snuff and show his teeth. As for the little mice, they ran out and danced a measure on the hearth and then back again; after which one of them squealed for some time for the amusement of the rest.
But just at midnight there was another noise heard—as somebody says,
“You could hear on the roof
The scraping and prancing of each little hoof,”—
and down came Santa Claus through the chimney.
He must have set out very early that night, to have so much time to spare, or perhaps he was cold in spite of his furs: for he came empty-handed, and had evidently no business calls in that direction. But the first thing he did was to examine the stocking and its contents.
At some of the articles he laughed, and at some he frowned, but most of all did he shake his head over the love that filled up all the spare room in the stocking. It was a kind of thing Santa Claus wasn’t used to; the little stockings were generally too full for anything of that sort,—when they had to hold candy enough to make the child sick, and toys enough to make him unhappy because he didn’t know which to play with first, of course very little love could get in. And there is no telling how many children would be satisfied if it did. But Santa Claus put all the things back just as he had found them, and stood smiling to himself for a minute, with his hands on his sides and his back to the fire. Then tapping the stocking with a little stick that he carried, he bent down over Carl and whispered some words in his ear, and went off up the chimney.
And the little mice came out and danced on the floor till the day broke.