“No, no,” shouted the children; “to-morrow evening is just the time when the Christ-child comes to us. Have we not just seen Ursula making our Christmas-cake? Oh, dear, angel of a father, we will be so good.”
The next day all without was dreary and stormy; the heavy snow-flakes fell all day long, but within it was bright and cheerful. Ursula had swept and dusted every nook and corner of the house, and the fires all burned brightly. In the study the father and mother were busy all the morning; the children, meanwhile, looked wisely at one another, and tried to keep back the smiles that would dimple out every moment.
At three o’clock, according to the custom of the house, the holyday began. The fragrance of the fresh Christmas-cake was wafted through the house, mother and children were all dressed in their holyday attire, and the father, easy and happy that the morrow’s sermon was prepared, sat and smoked in his arm-chair. At four o’clock Theodora came in from the gardener’s, where she had been in all the storm to carry a slice of the Christmas-cake, with the intelligence that strangers had arrived at the village inn.
This news made the good pastor restless, and after pacing up and down the room, he went to the window, and rubbing the moisture from the pane, looked out. And there, just round the corner, crept the old man in the gray coat, with his hands behind him, as formerly, and he walked up the steps and knocked at the door. “Courage,” said the pastor to himself, and hastened out to meet him.
“Here I am,” said the old man, in a hollow voice, his looks bent on the ground, “I have fortunately arrived here at last, but I am weary and ill, and I have no one to pity me. Do you remember your kind words; will you take me in? What! No reply?”
The honest pastor could not reply. This was what he had so long looked forward to, and now he was really grieved that the kind heart of the old man could not enjoy the brief pleasure of his little surprise. But as he stood silently there, the old man raised his eyes, met that look of love and sorrow, and threw himself into his arms.
“No,” cried he, “no longer bent with age, but erect and strong—away with dissimulation! O my benefactor, I am—”
“Stay!” interrupted the pastor, “there shall indeed be no dissembling in this happy moment. Sir William C——, I know you. The doctor wrote me all about you.”
“Take me, then, to your wife and children; they are mine, you are mine, but you must take me for payment, and keep me for the rest of my life.”
“Hush!” said the pastor, “my wife and children know nothing of the secret, now see what they will say. Come in, dear guest, come in.”