mill-men, to enjoy the evening, with not the cleanest face in the world, to be sure, but with an honest, jolly old heart under all, beating rough and glad and full.  That was Adam Craig’s fancy:  but his head was full of queer fancies under the rusty old brown wig:  queer, maybe, yet as pure and childlike as the prophet John’s:  coming, you know, from the same kinship.  Adam had kept his fancies to himself these forty years.  A lame old chap, cobbling shoes day by day, fighting the wolf desperately from the door for the sake of orphan brothers and sisters, has not much time to put the meanings God and Nature have for his ignorant soul into words, has he?  But the fancies had found utterance for themselves, somehow:  in his hatchet-shaped face, even, with its scraggy gray whiskers; in the quick, shrewd smile; in the eyes, keen eyes, but childlike, too.  In the very shop out there on the creek-bank you could trace them.  Adam had cobbled there these twenty years, chewing tobacco and taking snuff, (his mother’s habit, that,) but the little shop was pure:  people with brains behind their eyes would know that a clean and delicate soul lived there; they might have known it in other ways too, if they chose:  in his gruff, sharp talk, even, full of slang and oaths; for Adam, invoke the Devil often as he might, never took the name of Christ or a woman in vain.  So his foolish fancies, as he called them, cropped out.  It must be so, you know:  put on what creed you may, call yourself chevalier or Sambo, the speech your soul has held with God and the Devil will tell itself in every turn of your head, and jangle of your laugh:  you cannot help that.

But it was Christmas eve.  Adam took that in with keener enjoyment, in every frosty breath he drew.  Different from any Christmas eve before:  pulling off his scuffed cap to feel the full strength of the “nor’rer.”  Whew! how it blew! straight from the ice-fields of the Pole, he thought.  So few people there were up there to be glad Christ was coming!  But those filthy little dwarfs up there needed Him all the same:  every man of them had a fiend tugging at his soul, like us, was lonely, wanted a God to help him, and—­a wife to love him.  Adam stopped short here a minute, something choking in his throat.  “Jinny!” he said, under his breath, turning to some new hope in his heart, with as tender, awe-struck a touch as one lays upon a new-born infant.  “Jinny!” praying silently with blurred eyes.  I think Christ that moment came very near to the woman who was so greatly loved, and took her in His arms, and blessed her.  Adam jogged on, trying to begin a whistle, but it ended in a miserable grunt:  his heart was throbbing under his smoke-dried skin, silly as a woman’s, so light it was, and full.

“Get along, Old Dot, and carry one!” shouted the boys, sledding down the icy sidewalk.

“Yip! you young devils, you!” stopping to give them a helping shove and a cheer; loving little children always, but never as to-day.