Copyright, 1910,
BY
P. J. KENEDY & SONS.

Contents

"Last mail in, Mis' Bascomb?"

"Last mail's in, Tony."

"Be there anything for me to-night?"

Widow Bascomb knew perfectly well there was not, but she reached for a small pile of letters in a pigeonhole on her right and glanced over them rapidly. Her sour visage and rasping voice softened perceptibly as she smiled on the little old man before her.

"Sorry, Tony, there's nothing for you to-night."

"Thank you, Mis' Bascomb, p'raps it'll come to-morrow," and Tony turned away with a sigh and moved towards the door.

A group of men were gathered around the stove, smoking and exchanging the gossip of the town. These greeted him kindly as he passed and he returned the greetings half absently. Before opening the door, the old man stopped to give his woolen muffler one more turn around his neck.

"Purty cold snap, this," he remarked to the company in general. "Looks as if we'd have snow 'fore mornin' and a white Christmas after all. Good-night, Mis' Bascomb; good-night boys. A merry Christmas to you all!" and Tony stepped out into the frosty air of the December evening.

He sighed again as he turned up over the hill to the left and started for home. It had been a long, cold walk down to the village, and it would be equally long and even colder on the way back, for a sharp wind was blowing directly in his face. It was a bad night for an old man like Tony to be abroad and he was almost sorry that he had ventured out. But there was his promise to Martha; it would never do to break that. Martha had always been of a more hopeful turn of mind than he, anyway. While she was still alive she had imparted to him the same spirit of trust and hopefulness which shone in her steady gray eyes, but since God had taken Martha and left him all alone in the world of care and trouble, life had been hard indeed.

He had promised Martha never to omit the daily visit to the post-office to inquire for the letter which, thus far, had failed to arrive. Martha had been so sure that Sallie would write to them some day; Sallie, their handsome, wilful daughter, who had passed out of their lives nearly fifteen years before. He never blamed Sallie for wanting to leave them; what could a tiny village like this offer to one as clever, as pretty, as ambitious as Sallie had been? The neighbors had said many unkind things of Sallie but he heeded them not. They had called her vain, idle and silly; they said the folks at the big house had spoiled her and put notions into her head. They told him he did a foolish thing when he allowed her to go as maid to the lady of the big house over on the shores of the lake, and to go down to the city with the family when they moved home in the autumn. To tell the truth, poor Tony had little voice in the matter. Sallie, as usual, had taken affairs into her own hands and decided for herself.

Nearly fifteen years! It was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that Tony must go to the office every day, and during those long years, every evening, rain or shine, the same little scene was enacted in the village post-office. Every evening he had the same story of failure to report.

"No letter to-night, mother."

"Never mind, father; it'll sure come to-morrow," and Martha would sigh and clasp her hands in her lap.

Presently, by the movement of her lips he would know she was praying for the absent one. He would lay aside his pipe, fetch his beads, and together they would say the Rosary, begging the blessed Mother of God to keep special watch over their child. She was the only one they had left, four little white stones marking the resting-place of the four little angels who had been permitted to remain with them for only such a very short space of time.

Martha was sleeping now beside her babies and he was alone in the world; for who could tell what had become of Sallie? She, too, might be at rest in God's Acre. Sometimes he felt that she must be, or surely, surely, some word would have come from her. She must have known how anxiously they would watch for news of her, and certainly she would not be so heartless as to keep silence all this long