pt without giving.
Jimsy had helped him willingly and he had accepted--why he could not for
the life of him remember, save that it had something to do with his
throat and his poise. It did entail obligation of a sort, however, and
he was a just man. Abner Sawyer did not look at Stump. He blew out the
light.

In silence the two passed out and closed the door. The episodic
irregularities of the evening beginning with the Lindon _Evening News_
had reached unheard of climax. A mongrel dog was asleep in the warmth of
the sanctum.

Abner Sawyer had a strangling sense of another link to his biscuit-riven
chain and passed his hand over his forehead in a dazed and weary way.

"Abner," said Aunt Judith nervously at breakfast, "you--you don't think
this once we--could have--a--a Christmas tree for Jimsy?"

[Illustration]

"Certainly not!" said Mr. Sawyer coldly.

Aunt Judith's hand trembled a little as she poured the coffee and the
first citizen waited so long for her usual reply that he thought
impatiently it would never come. It came at last--quietly.

[Illustration]

"Just as you--say, Abner." But the final word was lost in an outraged
yell from somewhere near the woodpile.

"It--it must be Jimsy," said Aunt Judith hurriedly. "He--he was up so
early I gave him his breakfast. He's shoveling the snow from the
walks--"

"Gwan!" came a muffled roar. "Say that again and I'll bust yer face
good." Sounds of battle and vilifying repartee speedily upset the Sawyer
breakfast. Abner Sawyer pushed back his chair and strode hastily to the
kitchen window. He saw concentric circles of fists and snow and a
yapping dog. He could not know that the defensive section of the
maelstrom was Specks, the Christmas urchin next door, or that Jimsy and
Specks settled every controversy under Heaven in a fashion of their own.

The first citizen flung up the window.

"James!" he said in a terrible voice.

The concentric circles wavered--then whirled dizzily on.

"James!" Too much conventional horror and dignity there to pierce the
elemental.

"_Jimsy!_" There was sharp informality now that meant business. Jimsy
upset his freckled antagonist in the snow and wheeled.

"Mister Sawyer," he yelled indignantly, "he went an' said ye was an ol'
crab--an' a miser--an' a skinflint--an'--an' a stiff--an' I blacked his
eye fur him an' tol' him he lied. An' he went an' said ye didn't have no
heart or ye wouldn't let Aunt Judith carry in the wood an'