determined upon his errand, and kept his eyes
fixed on the wreck of the Flanton Dog.

Bob Cooper, who was idly strolling up and down the block, smoking a
cigarette, as he watched the flitting girlish shadows in a certain window
opposite, saw the child's frantic struggles in the snow and was intensely
amused. "Bah Jove!" he chuckled. "I believe he's after the wretched dawg
that I tossed over there with my stick. Fahncy it!" And carelessly he
puffed a whiff of smoke.

At last the baby reached the middle of the street and stooped to pick up
the battered toy. It was flattened and shapeless, but the child clasped it
tenderly and began to coo softly to it.

"Bah Jove!" repeated Cooper. "Fahncy caring so much about anything! Poor
kid! Perhaps that is all the Christmas he will have." He blew a thoughtful
puff through his nose. "Christmas Eve!" The thought flashed through his
mind with a new appeal.

Just then came a sudden "_Honk, honk!_" An automobile had turned the corner
and was coming up at full speed. It was the same machine which had passed a
few minutes earlier in the opposite direction.

"Hi there!" Cooper yelled to the child. But the latter was sitting in the
snow in the middle of the street, rocking back and forth, with the Flanton
Dog in his arms. There was scarcely time for action. Bob dropped his
cigarette and his cane, made one leap into the street and another to the
child, and by the impact of his body threw the baby into the drift at the
curb. With a horrified _honk_ the automobile passed over the young man, who
lay senseless in the snow.

[Illustration: BOB COOPER SAVES THE BABY]

He was not killed. Miss Terry saw him taken to his home close by, where his
broken leg was set and his bruises attended to. She saw him lying bandaged
and white on his bed when the woman and her child were brought to see him.
Johnnie was still clasping closely the unlucky Flanton Dog.

"Well, Kid," said the young man feebly, "so you saved the dog, after all."

"O sir!" cried the poor woman, weeping. "Only to think that he would not
be here now but for you. What a Christmas that would have been for me! You
were so good, so brave!"

"Oh, rot!" protested Bob faintly. "Had to do it; my fault anyway; Christmas
Eve,--couldn't see a kid hurt on Christmas Eve."

He called the attendant and asked for the pocket-book which had been in his
coat at the time of the accident. Putting it into the woman's hand, he
said, "Good-by. Get John