me
keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the icy
pavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was a
trading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jolly
Christmas face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grown
ashamed of their doings, and shut their doors, and covered their
windows with frosty trees, and cathedrals, and castles; the shops
opened their inmost hearts; some child's angel had touched them, and
they flushed out into a magic splendour of Christmas trees, and lights,
and toys; Santa Claus might have made his head-quarters in any one of
them. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quite
weighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burning
their pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you met
with a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families,
and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling them
into candy-stores or toy-shops; all of the churches whose rules
permitted them to show their deep rejoicing in a simple way, had
covered their cold stone walls with evergreens, and wreaths of glowing
fire-berries: the child's angel had touched them too, perhaps,--not
unwisely.

He passed crowds of thin-clad women looking in through open doors, with
red cheeks and hungry eyes, at red-hot stoves within, and a placard,
"Christmas dinners for the poor, gratis;" out of every window on the
streets came a ruddy light, and a spicy smell; the very sunset sky had
caught the reflection of the countless Christmas fires, and flamed up
to the zenith, blood-red as cinnabar.

Holmes turned down one of the back streets: he was going to see Lois,
first of all. I hardly know why: the child's angel may have touched
him, too; or his heart, full of a yearning pity for the poor cripple,
who, he believed now, had given her own life for his, may have plead
for indulgence, as men remember their childish prayers, before going
into battle. He came at last, in the quiet lane where she lived, to
her little brown frame-shanty, to which you mounted by a flight of
wooden steps: there were two narrow windows at the top, hung with red
curtains; he could hear her feeble voice singing within. As he turned
to go up the steps, he caught sight of something crouched underneath
them in the dark, hiding from him: whether a man or a dog he could not
see. He touched it.

"What d' ye want, Mas'r?" said a stifled vo