g hard the while. He finally
decided that he would give his brother yet another chance for his
father's sake. After all, they were brethren. But the decision came too
late. John Carstairs had stood not on the order of his going, but had
gone at once, none staying him.

William Carstairs stood in the outer door, the light from the hall
behind him streaming out into the night. He could see nothing. He called
aloud, but there was no answer. He had no idea where his younger brother
had gone. If he had been a man of finer feeling or quicker perception,
perhaps if the positions of the two had been reversed and he had been
his younger brother, he might have guessed that John might have been
found beside the newest mound in the churchyard, had one sought him
there. But that idea did not come to William, and after staring into the
blackness for a long time, he reluctantly closed the door. Perhaps the
vagrant could be found in the morning.

No, there had been no father waiting for the prodigal at the end of the
road, and what a difference it had made to that wanderer and vagabond!

II

We leave a blank line on the page and denote thereby that ten years have
passed. It was Christmas Eve, that is, it had been Christmas Eve when
the little children had gone to bed. Now midnight had passed and it was
already Christmas morning. In one of the greatest and most splendid
houses on the avenue two little children were nestled all snug in their
beds in a nursery. In an adjoining room sound sleep had quieted the
nerves of the usually vigilant and watchful nurse. But the little
children were wakeful. As always, visions of Santa Claus danced in their
heads.

They were fearless children by nature and had been trained without the
use of bugaboos to keep them in the paths wherein they should go. On
this night of nights they had left the doors of their nursery open. The
older, a little girl of six, was startled, but not alarmed, as she lay
watchfully waiting, by a creaking sound as of an opened door in the
library below. She listened with a beating heart under the coverlet;
cause of agitation not fear, but hope. It might be, it must be Santa
Claus, she decided. Brother, aged four, was close at hand in his own
small crib. She got out of her bed softly so as not to disturb Santa
Claus, or--more important at the time--the nurse. She had an idea that
Saint Nicholas might not welcome a nurse, but she had no fear at all
that he would not be gl