"But you'll say 'em to-night 'cause it's Christmas eve?"

"Yes, to-night," said the mother; "now you go to sleep."

"Are you waitin' for him to come, Mommy?" asked the littlest girl, who
was very sleepy.

"Yes," said the mother.

Presently, as she sat in the dark, having turned out the light, the deep
breathing of the children told her they were asleep. She rose quietly,
stepped to the window, and stood looking at the three shapeless,
tattered stockings. She was high up in the tenement and the moonlight
came softly over the house roofs of the city into the bare, cold,
cheerless room. She stared at the stockings and tears streamed down her
wasted cheeks. She had hung them low at the suggestion of the littlest
girl so the children could easily get at them in the morning.

[Illustration: She pressed them against her face.]

After a time she fell down on her knees. She pressed them against her
face. She did not say anything. She could scarcely think anything. She
just knelt there until something gently drew her head around. She
dropped the stockings. She put her right hand on the window-ledge to
steady herself and looked backward.

No sound save the breathing of the children and her own stifled sobs had
broken the silence; the door was shut, but a man was there, a man of
strange vesture seen dimly in the moon's radiance, yet there was a kind
of light about his face. She could see his features. They were those of