oor
mutt! That's cause he's been walloped so much. Aunt Judith," he blurted,
his gray eyes ablaze with pleading, "can't ye maybe jus' let him sleep
behind the stove? He's so sort of shivery I--I feel awful sorry fur
him."

"No, no, no!" said Aunt Judith in distress. "I can't. I can't, indeed.
Mr. Sawyer--"

"JAMES!"

[Illustration]

Aunt Judith and Jimsy jumped. The first citizen stood in the doorway,
the Lindon _Evening News_ in his hand, still unread. Nor could he have
explained why, save that a boy's absence may, queerly enough, be as
clamorous as his presence. With the biscuit still upon his mind, Abner
Sawyer felt impelled to discipline.

"Put the dog out!"

Jimsy stood his ground. He was used to that. And Abner Sawyer wondered
with a feeling of intense annoyance what there was about this ragged,
noisy child that injected drama into incident. There was a tenseness in
the silence of the trio and the cringing dog.

"Aw, have a heart!" pleaded Jimsy finally, and there was faith and
optimism in his steady glance.

Abner Sawyer cleared his throat and looked away. He wondered why he felt
defensive.

"I am fully equipped with the organ you mention," he said drily. "Put
the dog out."

Jimsy reluctantly obeyed, and as the door closed upon the shivering
little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise,
Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and
less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he reached for his
cap.

"Well," he said casually, "guess I'll go out and look the burg over."

It was queer how Jimsy's conversation seemed to bristle with verbal
shocks. Aunt Judith gasped. Mr. Sawyer fixed a stern eye upon the clock.

"It is eight o'clock," he said in what seemed to Jimsy's puzzled
comprehension a midnight tone of voice; "you will go to bed."

Dumfounded, Jimsy followed Aunt Judith up to bed. Here in a great,
old-fashioned bedroom he forgot everything in an eager contemplation of
a whirling, feathery background to his window.

"Aunt Judith," he called excitedly, "it's snowin'. Gee, that's
Christmasy, ain't it! I don't mind the snow at all s'long's I got a bed
cinched." His eager face lengthened. "Wisht Stump had a bed," he
finished wistfully.

[Illustration]

"Stump?"

"I jus' called him Stump, Aunt Judith, 'cause he didn't have no tail."
Aunt Judith's eyes were sympathetic.

But an embarrassing difficulty arose about Jimsy's bed attire whi