ght of the stars, his face, with its closed eyes, shone
with an expression of divine sweetness, and his soft, curling blond hair
seemed to form an aureole of light about his forehead. But his tender
feet, blue with the cold on this cruel night of December, were pitiful
to see!

The pupils so warmly clad and shod, passed with indifference before
the unknown child. Some, the sons of the greatest men in the city, cast
looks of scorn on the barefooted one. But little Wolff, coming last
out of the church, stopped deeply moved before the beautiful, sleeping
child.

"Alas!" said the orphan to himself, "how dreadful! This poor little one
goes without stockings in weather so cold! And, what is worse, he has no
shoe to leave beside him while he sleeps, so that the Christ Child may
place something in it to comfort him in all his misery."

And carried away by his tender heart, little Wolff drew off the wooden
shoe from his right foot, placed it before the sleeping child; and as
best as he was able, now hopping, now limping, and wetting his sock in
the snow, he returned to his aunt.

"You good-for-nothing!" cried the old woman, full of rage as she saw
that one of his shoes was gone. "What have you done with your shoe,
little beggar?"

Little Wolff did not know how to lie, and, though shivering with terror
as he saw the gray hairs on the end of her nose stand upright, he tried,
stammering, to tell his adventure.

But the old miser burst into frightful laughter. "Ah! the sweet young
master takes off his shoe for a beggar! Ah! master spoils a pair of
shoes for a barefoot! This is something new, indeed! Ah! well, since
things are so, I will place the shoe that is left in the fireplace, and
to-night the Christ Child will put in a rod to whip you when you wake.
And to-morrow you shall have nothing to eat but water and dry bread, and
we shall see if the next time you will give away your shoe to the first
vagabond that comes along."

And saying this the wicked woman gave him a box on each ear, and made
him climb to his wretched room in the loft. There the heartbroken little
one lay down in the darkness, and, drenching his pillow with tears, fell
asleep.

But in the morning, when the old woman, awakened by the cold and shaken
by her cough, descended to the kitchen, oh! wonder of wonders! she
saw the great fireplace filled with bright toys, magnificent boxes of
sugar-plums, riches of all sorts, and in front of all this treasure, the