“Yes,” said the younger children, who made a rush for their gifts and laid them on chairs before him.

“Grand old chap!” said he, staring thoughtfully at the flannel cat in his hands.  “Any idea who it is?”

“Can’t make out,” said Mrs. Vaughn; “very singular man.”

“Generous, too,” the teacher added.  “That’s the best cat I ever saw, Tom.  If I had my way, the cats would all be made of flannel.  Miss Polly, what did you get?”

“This,” said Polly, handing him the locket.

“Beautiful!” said he, turning it in his hand.  “Anything inside?”

Polly showed him how to open it.  He sat a moment or more looking at the graven gold.

“Strange!” said he, presently, surveying the wrought cases,

Mrs. Vaughn was now at his elbow.

“Strange?” she inquired.

“Well, long ago,” said he, “I heard of one like it.  Some time it may solve the mystery of your Santa Claus.”

An ear of the teacher had begun to swell and redden.

“Should have pulled my cap down,” said he, as the widow spoke of it.  “Frost-bitten years ago, and if I’m out long in the cold, I begin to feel it.”

“Must be very painful,” said Polly, as indeed it was.

“No,” said he, with a little squint as he touched the aching member.  “It’s good—­I rather like it.  I wouldn’t take anything for that ear.  It—­it—­” He hesitated, as if trying to recall the advantages of a chilled ear.  “Well, I shouldn’t know I had any ears if it weren’t for that one.  Come, Paul, put on your cap an’ mittens.  We’ll take a sack and get some green boughs for your mother.”

He put on snow-shoes, wrapped the boy snugly in a shawl, and, seating him on a snowboat, made off, hauling it with a rope over white banks and hollows toward the big timber.  The dog, Bony, came along with them, wallowing to his ears and barking merrily.  Since morning the sun had begun to warm the air, and a light breeze had risen.  The boy sat bracing on a rope fastened before and looped around him.  As they went along he was oversown with sparkling crystals.  They made his cheeks tingle, and almost took his breath as he went plunging into steep hollows.  Often he tipped over and sank in the white deep.  Then Trove hauled him out, brushed him a little, and set him back on the boat again.  Snow lay deep and level in the woods—­a big, white carpet, seamed with tiny tracks and figured with light and shadow.  Trove stopped a moment, looking up at the forest roof.  They could hear a baying of hounds in the far valley.  Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on a bough—­a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds.  Above, they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on reefs of evergreen.  The little people of this odd winter land had begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket.  A partridge had broken out of her cave, and they followed the track of her snow-shoes down the side-hill to a little brook.  Under its ice roof they could hear the tinkling water.  Above them the brook fell from a rock shelf, narrow and high as a man’s head.  The fall was muted to a low murmur under its vault of ice.