The old man looked almost dazed with surprise. He peered closer at Danny. “Is it a Christmas fairy you are, out of the wood?” he said in a whisper.
This was splendid, to be taken for a fairy! “Yes,” said Danny, laughing; and taking the aged man’s cold, gnarled old hand, he led him through the wood to his uncle’s house.
“Shure,” cried his aunt as she opened the door. “I do believe he’s afther bringing us Faither Christmas himself.”
Danny soon explained, and Bill and Bridget gave the old stranger a warm welcome. “They do say,” exclaimed Bridget, “that if you welcome a stranger on Christmas Eve, he may be an Angel.”
“’Tain’t no Angel as I be,” said the old man, shaking his head. And then he laughed, and he had little, twinkling eyes. “If there be an Angel about, ’tis yourself, or the boy here.”
Every one was hungry that night, and supper was a cheery meal. But after supper came the time Danny longed for. The lamp was put out (to save the oil), and the bright, dancing firelight glowed in the quaint little room, with its crooked beams and uneven floor. In the deep chimney-corner, one on each side, sat Bill and Bridget, and enthroned in the large armchair before the fire sat the ancient stranger, puffing contentedly at a long clay pipe. Danny was curled up on the rabbit-skin rug. “Now,” he said, his eyes dancing with expectation, “now for stories.”
So, to the accompaniment of crackles from the logs, Bill recounted many a strange and thrilling yarn of his sailor days. At last he was silent.
“Grandad,” said Danny, turning to the ancient stranger, “will you tell us a story? A mysterious one. I’m sure there were fairies and hobgoblins when you were a boy, long, long ago. Or, do you know a ghost story?”
The old man nodded his head. “Yes,” he said, “there were fairies, sure enough, when I was a boy. But I was not a good enough boy to see them. But a hobgoblin I did see, once. ’Twas on just such a night as this—Christmas Eve, with snow on the ground,—and ’twas but a stone’s throw from this very house.”
This was splendid! Danny turned round and fixed his eyes on the old man’s face. “Tell us, tell us,” he whispered.