eyebrows, that he bade the Sergeant "Fetch
Bill up here!" One might almost have expected the little white lamb to
have taken to its heels with fright at having raised such a storm,
could it have run at all. But it showed no signs of fear. On the
contrary it baa-ed quite lustily when the Sergeant should have been
safely out of earshot. The hand of the Captain had accidentally rested
upon the woolly head in putting down the letter. But the Sergeant was
not out of earshot. He heard it and grinned.

An iron door in the basement clanged and there were steps in the
passageway. The doorman brought in Bill. He stood by the door,
sullenly submissive. The Captain raised his head. It was in the shade.

"So you are back, are you?" he said.

The thief nodded.

The Captain bent his brows upon him and said with sudden fierceness,
"You couldn't keep honest a month, could you?"

"They wouldn't let me. Who wants a thief in his pay? And the children
were starving."

It was said patiently enough, but it made the Captain wince all the
same. They were his own words. But he did not give in so easily.

"Starving?" he repeated harshly. "And that's why you got this, I
suppose," and he pushed the sheep from under the newspaper that had
fallen upon it by accident and covered it up.

The thief looked at it and flushed to the temples. He tried to speak
but could not. His face worked, and he seemed to be strangling. In the
middle of his fight to master himself he saw the child's crumpled
message on the desk. Taking a quick step across the room he snatched
it up, wildly, fiercely.

"Captain," he gasped, and broke down utterly. The hardened thief wept
like a woman.

The Captain rang his bell. He stood with his back to the prisoner when
the doorman came in. "Take him down," he commanded. And the iron door
clanged once more behind the prisoner.

Ten minutes later the reporters were discussing across the way the
nature of "the case" which the night promised to develop. They had
piped off the Captain and one of his trusted men leaving the building
together, bound east. Could they have followed them all the way, they
would have seen them get off the car at Nineteenth Street, and go
toward the gas house, carefully scanning the numbers of the houses as
they went. They found one at last before which they halted. The
Captain searched in his pocket and drew forth the baby's letter to
Santa Claus, and they examined the number under the gas lamp. Yes