the
deacon's pew; and they waited.

Jack came slowly and gravely up the aisle and stopped at his master's
pew. He sniffed of the empty seat disapprovingly once or twice--he had
never seen it in that state before--then he climbed up and sat,
serious and attentive as he was wont, in his old seat, facing the
pulpit, nodding once as who should say, "I'm here; proceed!"

It is recorded that not even a titter was heard from the
Sunday-school, which was out in force. In the silence that reigned in
the church was heard only a smothered sob. The old minister looked
with misty eyes at his friend. He took off his spectacles, wiped them
and put them on again, and tried to speak; but the tears ran down his
cheeks and choked his voice. The congregation wept with him.

"Brethren," he said, when he could speak, "glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men! Jack has preached
a better sermon than I can to-night. Let us pray together."

It is further recorded that the first and only quarrel in the
Brownville church ended on Christmas Eve and was never heard of again,
and that it was all the work of Jack's sermon.

SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY

Skippy was at home in Scrabble Alley. So far as he had ever known home
of any kind it was there in the dark and mouldy basement of the rear
house, farthest back in the gap that was all the builder of those big
tenements had been able to afford of light and of air for the poor
people whose hard-earned wages, brought home every Saturday, left them
as poor as if they had never earned a dollar, to pile themselves up in
his strong box. The good man had long since been gathered to his
fathers: gone to his better home. It was in the newspapers, and in the
alley it was said that it was the biggest funeral--more than a hundred
carriages, and four black horses to pull the hearse. So it must be
true, of course.

Skippy wondered vaguely, sometimes, when he thought of it, what kind
of a home it might be where people went in a hundred carriages. He had
never sat in one. The nearest he had come to it was when Jimmy
Murphy's cab had nearly run him down once, and his "fare," a big man
with whiskers, had put his head out and angrily called him a brat,
and told him to get out of the way, or he would have him arrested. And
Jimmy had shaken his whip at him and told him to skip home. Everybody
told him to skip. From the policeman on the block to the hard-fisted
man he knew as his fa