It was about an hour before the time set for the Christmas festivities. He sped along through the moonlight. Twice he saw some one coming far down the road, and slunk to the cover of a bush, like a rabbit. One man went crunching past without a pause, but the other stopped when he neared the bush, and stared about him incredulously.
"I swan, I thought I see somebody ahead here," John Henry heard him say. He hugged close to the shadow of the bush until the squeaking crunch of the man's footsteps were out of hearing, then he came out and ran for the school-house, which was not far distant.
The windows were quite dark, and the door was locked. John Henry, however, was not dependent upon a door; he raised a window, and climbed in easily enough. The little interior was full of the spicy fragrance of evergreen, which had also a subtle festive suggestiveness. John Henry stole across to the desk, took a match from his pocket, and lighted a lamp, and then the tree blazed out. It was a fine tall tree, festooned with garlands of pop-corn, and grafted, as it were, into splendid and various fruit bearing. John Henry was not long in the school-house. He had brought a lead-pencil and rubber, and had noted the exact hanging places of his presents. It was barely ten minutes before the windows were again dark and John Henry was hurrying home.
His mother, who was very busy putting on a new brown cashmere dress, and his father, who was shaving, had not missed him. He stole in quietly, and sat down by the sitting-room stove. He was elated, but he had some misgivings. He was quite sure of his good motives, and yet there was a little sense of guilt.
When at length he started again, with his father and mother, he was very quiet. His mother asked him two or three times on the way if he did not feel well, and pulled his scarf more closely around his neck.
The district school-house was packed that evening; all the scholars and their families had come. Jim Mills was already there when John Henry entered, and rolled his eyes about at him with a curious expression of mingled hope and doubt.
Poor Jim Mills turned pale when the distribution of gifts began, and listened intently, every nerve strained, for his own name. He had not long to wait. He went down the aisle, his knees shaking, and received—not an orange, not a candy-bag, not the girl's book, of which he had still a bitter suspicion, but a parcel which at the first touch he knew, with a bewilderment of rapture, to contain skates. He had scarcely reached his seat before his name was called again, and forth he went for the second time, and was given a jack-knife with many blades. Then he went up to receive a top, then a boy's book, then another boy's book, then a pair of beautiful red mittens, then a sled. Jim Mills started up at the sound of his name and traversed the school-room until everybody stared, and the teacher began to look puzzled and anxious. She consulted with the committee-man who was distributing the presents, and his wife, who had been helping her that afternoon. Then she went to John Henry's father and mother, and one of his aunts who was there, and they all whispered together. Finally she bent over Jim Mills and whispered to him, and he immediately crooked his arm around his face, leaned forward upon his desk, and began to cry. He was a nervous boy; he had not eaten much that day, and the fall from such an unwonted height of joyful possession was a hard one.
"You must tell me the truth, Jim Mills," the teacher whispered, sharply.
"I—didn't," responded Jim Mills, with a painful cry, as if she had struck him.
"If you did come in here while we were gone and mark John Henry Lewis's presents over for yourself, tell me at once, if you do not want to be very severely punished," said the teacher, quite aloud.