looking old gentleman with a grizzled beard.

"I'll catch old Scratch!" he admitted, suddenly overcome by the bulbous
appearance of the sleigh, "but Ellen may say what she will. She
_couldn't_ have thought of everything!"

No call for pills came that night from Muggs, asleep in a crib that had
seen much service. He was awake however long before daylight, trembling
with excitement.

"Mike, oh Mike!" he called hoarsely. "Wake up. It's Christmas mornin'."

Mike, in a big bed with Marty Fay, sat up.

"Don't you _dare_ open your mouth to-day!" he cried in blood-thirsty
accents, "or Mom Murphy'll git ye surer'n scat. Ain't I schemed enuff to
git ye here? Huh? Wanta be sent home--huh?" Muggs ducked beneath the
blankets with a shivering wail.




III

The Log at Dawn


In the still, cold corridors of a farmhouse, with frost-jungles clouding
every window pane and a zero-dark outside, the cry of "Merry Christmas!"
is most at home. Let noses be ever so cold and blanketed bodies ever so