The man did not move.  Holmes touched him with the stick.

“Come out,” he said.

He came out, looking gaunt, as with famine.

“I’ll not flurr myself,” he said, crunching his ragged hat in his hands,—­“I’ll not.”

He drove the hat down upon his head, and looked up with a sullen fierceness.

“Yoh’ve got me, an’ I’m glad of ‘t.  I’m tired, fearin’.  I was born for hangin’, they say,” with a laugh.  “But I’ll see my girl.  I’ve waited hyur, runnin’ the resk,—­not darin’ to see her, on ‘count o’ yoh.  I thort I was safe on Christmas-day,—­but what’s Christmas to yoh or me?”

Holmes’s quiet motion drove him up the steps before him.  He stopped at the top, his cowardly nature getting the better of him, and sat down whining on the upper step.

“Be marciful, Mas’r!  I wanted to see my girl,—­that’s all.  She’s all I hev.”

Holmes passed him and went in.  Was Christmas nothing to him?  How did this foul wretch know that they stood alone, apart from the world?

It was a low, cheerful little room that he came into, stooping his tall head:  a tea-kettle humming and singing on the wood-fire, that lighted up the coarse carpet and the gray walls, but spent its warmest heat on the low settee where Lois lay sewing, and singing to herself.  She was wrapped up in a shawl, but the hands, he saw, were worn to skin and bone; the gray shadow was heavier on her face, and the brooding brown eyes were like a tired child’s.  She tried to jump up when she saw him, and not being able, leaned on one elbow, half-crying as she laughed.

“It’s the best Christmas gift of all I I can hardly b’lieve it!”—­touching the strong hand humbly that was held out to her.

Holmes had a gentle touch, I told you, for dogs and children and women:  so, sitting quietly by her, he listened with untiring patience to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles she had patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense of color and grace betrayed in the bits of flannel and leather; and took, with a grave look of wonder, his own package, out of which a bit of woollen thread peeped forth.

“Don’t look till to-morrow mornin’,” she said, anxiously, as she lay back trembling and exhausted.

The breath of the mill!  The fires of want and crime had finished their work on her life,—­so!  She caught the meaning of his face quickly.

“It’s nothin’,” she said, eagerly.  “I’ll be strong by New-Year’s; it’s only a day or two rest I need.  I’ve no tho’t o’ givin’ up.”

And to show how strong she was, she got up and hobbled about to make the tea.  He had not the heart to stop her; she did not want to die,—­why should she? the world was a great, warm, beautiful nest for the little cripple,—­why need he show her the cold without?  He saw her at last go near the door where old Yare sat outside, then heard her breathless cry, and a sob.  A moment after the old man came into the room, carrying her, and, laying her down on the settee, chafed her hands and misshapen head.