house with the distant echo of village
bells at midnight but, long before that, Christmas, in a fur cap and
great-coat had swept up the driveway with a jingle of sleigh-bells,
behind old Polly, the Doctor's mare, his sleigh packed high with
bundles. By the light of a late moon, flinging festal silver on the
snow, it might be seen that Christmas resembled a somewhat guilty
looking old gentleman with a grizzled beard.

"I'll catch old Scratch!" he admitted, suddenly overcome by the bulbous
appearance of the sleigh, "but Ellen may say what she will. She
_couldn't_ have thought of everything!"

No call for pills came that night from Muggs, asleep in a crib that had
seen much service. He was awake however long before daylight, trembling
with excitement.

"Mike, oh Mike!" he called hoarsely. "Wake up. It's Christmas mornin'."

Mike, in a big bed with Marty Fay, sat up.

"Don't you _dare_ open your mouth to-day!" he cried in blood-thirsty
accents, "or Mom Murphy'll git ye surer'n scat. Ain't I schemed enuff to
git ye here? Huh? Wanta be sent home--huh?" Muggs ducked beneath the
blankets with a shivering wail.

III

The Log at Dawn

In the still, cold corridors of a farmhouse, with frost-jungles clouding
every window pane and a zero-dark outside, the cry of "Merry Christmas!"
is most at home. Let noses be ever so cold and blanketed bodies ever so
warm, the cry fills the dawn with electric energy. The Doctor began it.
He knew by the instant response that he had started something that he
could not stop. Almost in no time, it seemed, Roger was leading a wild,
bare-footed scamper down the stairs--for Roger _knew_--and the Doctor,
hastily bath-robed and slippered, was on behind with a lamp. But here
was no cyclonic invasion of a dark, cold sitting-room. Old Annie and
Asher knew boys! A log blazed brightly in the fireplace and the lamp was
lit. If the room was over-warm, it proved simply that Annie had seen
boys of another generation rushing down of a Christmas morning, scantily
clad.

And the King of Christmas trees blazed in candle-glory from wall to
wall, tinselled boughs sagging with the weight of its Christmas
freight. It could not have been bigger--it could not have glittered
more. It had as many arms as an Octopus and its shaggy evergreen head,
starred gorgeously with iridescence, brushed the old-fashioned paper on
the ceiling. A great, lovable Christmas giant guarding a cargo of
Christmas gifts!

Muggs e