"No, my poor fellow, it was not to reproach or punish you I came. I have not the least intention of doing you any harm. You have a good character among your neighbors; but you must expect to be quickly cut short in such freedoms as you took with me. Hold your hand; here's thirty guineas for you to buy leather. Live close, and set your children a commendable example; and to put you further out of temptation with such unbecoming doings, as you are a neat workman (they tell me) and I am not particularly hurried, make for me and this boy two pairs of shoes each, which he shall call upon you for."

The poor man, dumfounded and almost in tears, stood before his benefactor, gazing at him and at the shining coins in his own open hand. The wife cried softly to herself, and the children, growing accustomed to the stranger, began swarming about his legs. Mr. Stamyn's servant then laid down a good-sized basket, and took off the lid. The children rushed to this new attraction, and began diving into the recesses of the basket with their poor, skinny little hands. The woman went up to Mr. Stamyn:

"Oh! sir, we'll bless you to our dying day. And never fear; my husband is a good workman, and he will work night and day with a will to make you the finest pair of shoes that ever was.... And, oh! sir, the children shall pray for you, that God may reward what you've done for a poor, starving family. No; my husband, he never stole before in his life, sir."

Here the husband, recovering his powers of speech, joined in, and rained blessings on his kind patron, who left the miserable place in a far more cheerful frame of mind than he had enjoyed at the great meeting last night. Just before he left Weston, the shoes were brought to him by the wife and her eldest child, who loaded him again with the most grateful blessings, and promised to pray that, if he were not a Catholic, still God would "grant him grace to save his soul."

Mr. Stamyn smiled sadly, and bade his new friends good-by, having learnt their name, and promised in return never to forget it, should he happen to be in Weston again. Christmas had been a happy season with him this year; and though, by his present to the poor shoemaker, he had curtailed his own pleasure-jaunt, he felt that, after all, he had chosen the better part....

II.

It was Christmas once more. Forty years had come and gone, and prosperity reigned in the North of England. A famine worse than that early one had swept over the land—a famine of work and cotton—but even the traces of that dire misfortune had gone now, and mills and factories were as busy as they could be.

In the neighboring county of Cumberland, in a retired little town, agricultural and pacific, stood a pretty, old-fashioned house, half-mansion, half-cottage. One side, with its dignified portal of granite, faced the street; but its garden, with bow-windows and porches jutting out among the flowers, almost leaned on the mountain. The family room looked into the snow-covered garden; the deep windows were embowered in ivy, bearing a fringe of tiny icicles, while inside wreaths of holly hung festooned over the dark curtains. Over the large and very high mantel-piece, where a fox's brush and head mingled with the branching antlers of the red deer, there hung a framed device, illuminated in mediæval letters: "Peace on earth to men of good will"; above the door was a large bunch of mistletoe.

The window was partly open, the huge fire warming the room quite enough to allow of this; on the sill was scattered a feast of bread-crumbs steeped in milk, at which two or three robins were pecking industriously.

This was the mayor's house. He was an old man of seventy-five, universally respected for his incorruptible honesty and his steady, reliable character. He had been born in the town, but had left it while yet a baby in arms, had then returned a grown man and father of a family, gone into trade, become a successful business man, and seven years ago retired honorably into private life. Of his sons, one was a mill-owner near Manchester, one had succeeded to his father's local business and factory, and one, his youngest, had died at sea, leaving a little girl, his only child, to the care of its grandparents. The old man's only daughter was a nun in a Carmelite convent in the South of France.