windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin
saw them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations
of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with
that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal
human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's
brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children
escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch
and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
sound of musical boxes.

Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home
talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours,
and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying
that his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a
step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily
have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence,
waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some
infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the
frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could
make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and
forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if
he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while
these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm's touch of
him, he was locked outside with his impulses. Barker had, in