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Aunt Judith and Jimsy jumped. The first citizen stood in the doorway, the Lindon Evening News in his hand, still unread. Nor could he have explained why, save that a boy's absence may, queerly enough, be as clamorous as his presence. With the biscuit still upon his mind, Abner Sawyer felt impelled to discipline.

"Put the dog out!"

Jimsy stood his ground. He was used to that. And Abner Sawyer wondered with a feeling of intense annoyance what there was about this ragged, noisy child that injected drama into incident. There was a tenseness in the silence of the trio and the cringing dog.

"Aw, have a heart!" pleaded Jimsy finally, and there was faith and optimism in his steady glance.

Abner Sawyer cleared his throat and looked away. He wondered why he felt defensive.

"I am fully equipped with the organ you mention," he said drily. "Put the dog out."

Jimsy reluctantly obeyed, and as the door closed upon the shivering little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise, Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he reached for his cap.

"Well," he said casually, "guess I'll go out and look the burg over."

It was queer how Jimsy's conversation seemed to bristle with verbal shocks. Aunt Judith gasped. Mr. Sawyer fixed a stern eye upon the clock.

"It is eight o'clock," he said in what seemed to Jimsy's puzzled comprehension a midnight tone of voice; "you will go to bed."

Dumfounded, Jimsy followed Aunt Judith up to bed. Here in a great, old-fashioned bedroom he forgot everything in an eager contemplation of a whirling, feathery background to his window.

"Aunt Judith," he called excitedly, "it's snowin'. Gee, that's Christmasy, ain't it! I don't mind the snow at all s'long's I got a bed cinched." His eager face lengthened. "Wisht Stump had a bed," he finished wistfully.

"Stump?"

"I jus' called him Stump, Aunt Judith, 'cause he didn't have no tail." Aunt Judith's eyes were sympathetic.

But an embarrassing difficulty arose about Jimsy's bed attire which drove Stump for a time from his mind. It was solved by a night-shirt of first-citizen primness, which trailed upon the carpet and made him snigger self-consciously behind his hand until he heard Aunt Judith's step again beyond the door, when he vaulted into bed, shivering luxuriously in the chill softness of unaccustomed linen.... And then Aunt Judith blew out the lamp and tucked him in with hands so tremulous and gentle that his throat troubled him again, and he lay very still. Meeting her eyes, he suddenly buried his face in the pillow with a gulp and a sob, and clung to her hand. Aunt Judith, shaking, caught him wildly in her arms, cried very hard, and kissed him good-night. Jimsy, Stump and Aunt Judith Sawyer knew variously the meaning of starvation.

III

THE CHAIN GROWS

The house grew very still. Jimsy, awaking after a time with the start of unfamiliar surroundings, heard the rattle of wind and snow against his window. A tree brushed monotonously against the panes—then through the sounds of winter storm came an unmistakable whimper and a howl. The boy sat up. Stump! Huddled likely against the door in an agony of faith. Jimsy thought of a winter night before Mom Dorgan had taken him in, and shivered. The howl came again.