was asleep and I sat down by him, he pushed up my roach, and he says:

“You’re a very fatherly little fellow, Steele Pedicord.”

It put me in mind to ask him if he’s Sam’s father, but he laughed out loud at the notion.

“Sam’s smaller than you and he minds so well,” says I. “And I never saw a man that was so handy at girl’s work.”

“Sam is an excellent fellow,” says the Whizzer, “but I don’t deserve to have a Chinaman called my son.”

“Oh!” I says. “Is he a Chinaman? Well, I’ve read about them, but I never saw one before.”

Then I concluded to ask the Whizzer what his own name was. But just then he got up from his chair and brought the other basket to the fire.

“Do you know who Santa Claus is?” he says, talking low.

“I found that out two years ago,” says I.

“Well, get her little stockings, then,” he says.

“I thought you’d like to do this yourself,” says the Whizzer. He acted just like mother.

We took the things out of the basket. There were toy sheep and dogs, and dolls and tubs and dishes, and underneath them all kinds of candies, enough to treat a school. I felt like the Whizzer was Santa Claus. We stuffed her little stockings till they stood alone, like kegs, and tied bundles to them, and fastened them together and hung them on the mantel-piece. Bounce’d wake up and watch us, and then he’d doze off, for Bounce was fuller of turkey-bones than he ever expected to be again; and Mrar slept away, looking like a doll in the fireshine.

But all at once Bounce gave a jump and a bark. Back went the door like the wind had tore it open, and there stood uncle Moze, and aunt Ibby, and cousin Andy Sanders, and the Widow Briggs’s grown son, and two or three men behind them. They all looked scared or mad, and aunt Ibby’s face was so white that her moles all bristled.

“This is a pretty how-to-do,” says she, speaking up loud like she did on wash-days, or times she took a stick and drove the boys to the wood-pile. “What’s going on in this house to-night? fires, and candles burning, and travellers putting up, and children running away when they’re let go some place else to stay all night! You little sneak,” says she, “you’ll get one such a whipping as you ached for when your mother was alive.”

“Stop, stop,” says the Whizzer peaceably.

“What are you doing in this house?” says cousin Andy Sanders. “Are you the man I saw go past my place to-night on that wheel, pulling the children?”

“I am,” says the Whizzer, “and I’ve been making notes of the personal property that has been carried out of the house.”

“Well,” says uncle Moze, “I’m the constable and this is my posse.”

The Whizzer laughed, and he says, “This thornbush is my thornbush, and this dog my dog.”

I did not know what he meant and they acted as if they did not either.

“I arrest you,” says uncle Moze, “for breaking into a house and disturbing the peace.”

“You can’t do it,” says the Whizzer.

“Go in and take him,” says uncle Moze to the other men.

“Because this is my house,” says the Whizzer.

I swallowed my breath when he said that.

“I wish you’d shut the door,” he says; “and since to-morrow is Christmas, and I don’t want to harbor any ill-will, you can shut it behind instead of in front of you. I’m Steele Pedicord, this boy’s father as you might all know by looking at me.”

Even cousin Andy Sanders didn’t jump any more than I did, but I jumped for gladness, and seemed like he jumped for something else.

“I’m appointed guerdeen to the children,” he says, “and I don’t want any impudent talk from a stranger.”

“You pretend you don’t know me, Andy Sanders,” says the Whizzer, “but I always knew you. You expected to settle on their land, while Moze and his wife pillaged their goods. I didn’t grow up with you for nothing.”

“Steele Pedicord died when that boy was a year old,” says aunt Ibby, and she looked so awful and so big I could hardly bear to watch her. “He was killed by the Indians on his way from Californy, after he sent his money home.”

“He was only kept prisoner by the Indians,” says my father, “and sick and ill-used. But he had no notion he was dead till he got away after a few years, and heard his widow was married again, and even mother to another child.”

“It’s a likely story,” says cousin Andy Sanders, “that a man wouldn’t come forward and claim his own in such a case.”

“Your notion of a man and mine never did agree, Andy Sanders,” says my father. “She wasn’t to blame, and her second husband was my best friend. The boy and girl are mine now.”

“It’s some robbing scheme,” says aunt Ibby, but she looked as if she knew him well enough.

“I’ve more to give them than you could have taken from them,” he says, “and you may begin to investigate to-night. Is that the Widow Briggs’s boy?” he says.

The Briggs boy came up and shook hands with him, and the other men stepped in and shook hands, too. They all begun to talk. But uncle Moze, and aunt Ibby, and cousin Andy Sanders left the door, and I heard them slam the gate.

Mrar slept right along, though the neighbors talked so loud and fast; and I sat down on the lounge at her feet, wondering what she would say Christmas morning when she found out the Whizzer was my own father, that mother thought was dead since I’s a year old!

I felt so queer and glad that something in me whizzed like the wheel, and while my father was not looking, and everybody sat up to the fire asking questions, I slipped over and tried to hug it around the cranks that he wiggled with his feet.

You can read pieces about Santa Claus coming on a sledge, but that’s nothing to having your own father—that you think is dead and gone—ride up like a regular Whizzer and open the house for Christmas!