and a chance of seeing Santa
Claus come up the long hill, with his reindeer flying like the wind
over the snow and taking the roofs of the houses with a single bound.
So he moved over to the sofa where he could see better, and where it
would not be likely his sleepiness would be observed.

The last thing he recalled in the sitting-room was when he parted the
heavy curtains at the foot of the sofa and looked out at the snow
stretching away down the hill toward the woods, and shining in the
light of the great round moon which had just come up over the side of
the yard to the eastward. Then he curled up in the corner of the sofa
as wide awake as a boy could be who had made up his mind to keep awake
until midnight. The next thing he remembered was Sate jumping up and
snuggling by him, and the next was his father coming in and telling
him Johnny was waiting outside with his sled and the two goats hitched
to it to take a long ride, and his wrapping him up carefully in his
heavy overcoat. In a second he was out in the yard and made a dash for
the cow-lot, and there, sure enough, was Johnny waiting for him at the
gate in the cow-pasture with a curious little peaked cap on his head
and his coat collar turned up around his chin and tied with a great
red comforter, so that only his eyes and nose peeped over it. As Tommy
had never seen Johnny with that cap on before, he asked him where he
had got it, and he said he had swapped caps with a little old man he
had met driving a cow in the road as he came home. He could not keep
this cap on his head, so Johnny had given him his in place of it, as
it fitted him very well. And there were the two goats hitched to the
very sled Tommy had made. In a minute they were on the sled, Tommy in
front with the reins and Johnny sitting behind. Just as they were
about to start, to Tommy's horror, out came Sate, and do as they
might, Sate would not go back; but jumped up on the sled and settled
down at Tommy's feet, and as Johnny said he did not mind and that Sate
would keep Tommy's feet warm, they let him stay, which proved in the
end to be a very fortunate thing. Just after they had fixed themselves
comfortably, Johnny said, "Are you ready?" "Ready!" said Tommy, and
gathered up the reins, and the next moment the goats started off, at
first at a walk and then at a little trot, while Tommy was telling
Johnny what his father had told him about the night in Santa Claus's
country being so long that someti