"Vell," remarked Nels, with a sigh of relief as they gained the road,
"Ay tank dose Roneys pelieve en Santa Claus now. Dose peen funny vay
fer Santa Claus to coom."
Charlie's laugh was good to hear. "He didn't exactly come down the
chimney, that's a fact, but it'll do at a pinch. We ought to have told
them to get a present for the dog--collar and chain. I reckon he
wouldn't hardly be thankful for it, though, eh?"
"Ay gass not. Ha liges ta haf hes nights ta hemself."
"Well, we had our fun, anyway. Sort of puts me in mind of old
Wisconsin, somehow."
From far off over the valley, with its dismantled cornfields and
snow-covered haystacks, beyond the ice-bound river, floated slow, and
sonorous, the mellow clanging of church bells. They were ushering in
the Christmas morn. Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding
and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these
humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple,
generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when
the Jewish shepherds, guarding their flocks by night, read in their
shining depths that in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ-Child was born.
The rising sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of
crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened
with a creak, and Mr.
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