nement 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
a man in middle years. They were lined with care. He had seen life on
its seamy side. The woman felt that he had known poverty and loneliness.
She stared up at him.

"I didn't believe," she whispered; "it cannot be. I thought we were
forgotten."

The man slowly raised his hand. The moonlight struck fair upon it. She
saw that it was calloused, the hand of a man who toiled. It was extended
over her head. There was no bodily touch, but her head bent low down
until she rested it upon her hands upon the floor. When she looked up,
the room was empty. There was no sound save the breathing of the
children and the throb of her own heart which beat wildly in the fearful
hollow of her ear.

She heard a sound of strange footsteps outside the door. There was a
crackle as of paper, the soft sound of things laid upon the floor, a
gentle rapping on the panels, a light laugh, a rustle of draperies,
footsteps moving away. As in a dream she got to her feet, she knew not
how. She opened the door.

The hall was dimly illuminated. Her feet struck a little heap of
joy-bringing parcels. She leaned back against the door-jamb, her hand
to her heart, trembling. What could it mean?

A tiny voice broke the silence. It was the littlest girl turning over in
her sleep, murmuring incoherently and then clearly:

"If you only believe, that's enough; if you only believe."

IV

The Workman

"IS NOT THIS THE CARPENTER?"

IV

The Workman

In the mean squalid room back of the saloon half a score