clasped him around the leg and the girl still held his hand, or whether
to wait.

The power of decision suddenly left him, for the steps stopped before
the door. There was a little click as a hand pressed a button on the
wall and the whole room was flooded with light from the great
electrolier in the centre. Well, the game was up. "Crackerjack" had been
crouching low with the children. He rose to his feet and looked
straightly enough into the barrel of a pistol held by a tall, severe
looking man in a rich silk dressing robe, who confronted him in the
doorway. Two words broke from the lips of the two men, the same words
that had fallen from their lips when they met ten years before.

"John!" cried the elder man, laying the weapon on a nearby table.

"Will!" answered "Crackerjack" in the same breath.

As if to mark the eternal difference as before, the one was clothed in
habiliments of wealth and luxury, the other in the rags and tatters of
poverty and shame.

"Why, that isn't Santa Claus," instantly burst out the little girl,
"that's papa."

"Dis is Santy Claus's friend, papa," said the little boy. "We were doin'
to su'prise him. He said be very still and we minded."

"So this is what you have come to, John," said the elder man, but there
was an unwonted gentleness in his voice.