ss flapped coldly
about her legs. As David turned the corner she arose, and, for all her
stiffness and shivering, exclaimed, cheerily, "A merry Christmas,
father!" and reached to kiss him.

He took her in his arms--she was very, very slight--and lifted her to
his lips, and then, throwing one side of his own scanty coat about her
and holding it there with an affectionate hug, he said, "Come, come,
little daughter, it's too bleak for a little body like you to be out.
It's cruel, cruel, but I dared not tell him it was so late. What does he
know or care for my poor little faithful, Loving Scout?"

"Your Scout couldn't miss Christmas Eve, father, if it was ever so
cold."

"And does she ever miss? No, no, she's a dutiful Scout, winter and
summer, rain and shine, morning and night, and what should I ever do
without her!"

So, talking and fighting the wind by turns, they walked on, the bent and
shuffling old man and his Little Scout, as he had named her and as they
all affectionately called her, through dark streets where, ever and
anon, a car or belated dray shivered by, as if the cold had touched even
its insensibility, and made the tracks resound and the paving blocks
rattle in the clear air; through deep cisterns of streets, between lofty
stone banks--as stern almost as their governing boards, for, although
boards are chiefly wooden, a supplication will quickly petrify them;
through rows of illuminated stores like walls of Arabian Night visions,
with traceries of frost on their windows richer in design than the gems
within them; through clustering crowds that entered or left continually
the swinging doors of saloons and hotels; past waiting carriages; past
swearing men; past laughing ladies, and past beggars, wearier, and
colder, and lonelier than themselves. So they travelled, scarcely
heeding what they saw in their speed until, on the margin of all the
din, by a turn through a dark street, they reached a darker alley, and,
passing down it, at last stopped before their own homely door.

The building had once been a warehouse,--David liked it the better for
that, he said. "Why, all my life has been spent in trade, and, you see,
I've sort a become attached to anything that smacks of it, though I've
little reason to feel so, the Lord knows!" he would exclaim to his
friends. Up above, over a long door in the top story--you can scarcely
make it out in the uncertain light--jutted a weather-beaten crane, with
a long disused