hastened back, suffered all the various desperations of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human face.  This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher’s brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang.  Children escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and meddle in places forbidden.  Friends dashed against each other with rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the sound of musical boxes.

Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the human heart drifted in and out of McLean’s hearing; fragments of home talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours, and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed knit in a single skein of home ties.  Two or three came by whose purses must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step toward them.  There were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier.  But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place.  The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm’s touch of him, he was locked outside with his impulses.  Barker had, in the natural press of customers, long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished, he was ready to go on to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean.  He found him obliterated in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.

“He looks livelier than you do,” said the hearty Governor. “’Fraid it’s been slow waiting.”

“No,” replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully.  “No, I guess not.”

This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.  “You never did lie to me,” he said, “long as I’ve known you.  Well, never mind.  I’ve got some real advice to ask you now.”

At this Mr. McLean’s face grew more alert.  “Say Doc,” said he, “what do yu’ want for Christmas that nobody’s likely to give yu’?”

“A big practice—­big enough to interfere with my politics.”

“What else?  Things and truck, I mean.”

“Oh—­nothing I’ll get.  People don’t give things much to fellows like me.”