“Nay, Father!” and, as she spoke, the door banged violently in Josef’s face, as if to emphasize the good wife’s rebuke.  “It was a little child; I heard it,” insisted Bettine, as they staggered back to the fire and sank weakly into their chairs.  “Perhaps it was the Holy Child Himself, who knows?  But why would He not enter?  Why, Josef!  Oh, I fear we were not good enough!”

“I only know that we have perhaps lost our good dog.  Why did you open the door, Bettine?” grumbled Josef sleepily.

“Prince is not lost.  For what was he bred a snow-dog upon the mountains if a storm like this be danger to him?  He is of the race that rescues, that finds and is never lost.  Mayhap the Holy Child had work for him this night.  Ah, the Little One!  If I could but have seen Him for one moment!” And good Bettine’s head nodded drowsily on her chair-back.  Presently the old couple were fast asleep.

Now when they had been dreaming strange things for some time, there came a scratching at the door, and a loud bark which woke them suddenly.

“What was that?” exclaimed Grandfather, starting nervously.  “Ho, Prince!  Are you without there?” and he ran to the door, while Grandmother was still rubbing from her eyes the happy dream which had made them moist,—­the dream of a rosy, radiant Child who was to be the care and comfort of a lonely cottage.  And then, before she had fairly wakened from the dream, Prince bounded into the room and laid before the fire at her feet a soft, snow-wrapped bundle, from which hung a pale little face with golden hair.

“It is the Child of my dream!” cried Bettine.  “The Holy One has come back to us.”

“Nay, this is no dream-child, mother.  This is a little human fellow, nearly frozen to death,” exclaimed Josef Viaud, pulling the bundle toward the fire.  “Come, Bettine, let us take off his snow-stiff clothes and get some little garments from the chests yonder.  I will give him a draught of something warm, and rub the life into his poor little hands and feet.  We have both been dreaming, it seems.  But certainly this is no dream!”

“Look!  The dove!” cried Grandmother, taking the bird from the child’s bosom, where it still nestled, warm and warming.  “Josef!  I believe it is indeed the Holy Child Himself,” she whispered.  “He bears a dove in his bosom, like the image in the Church.”  But even as she spoke the dove fluttered in her fingers, then, with a gentle “Coo-roo!” whirled once about the little chamber and darted out at the door, which they had forgotten quite to close.  With that the child opened his eyes.

“The dove is gone!” he cried.  “Yet I am warm.  Why—­has the little Stranger come once more?” Then he saw the kind old faces bent over him, and felt Prince’s warm kisses on his hands and cheeks, with the fire flickering pleasantly beyond.

“It is like coming home again!” he murmured, and with his head on Bettine’s shoulder dropped comfortably to sleep.