So another year passed over ’em all, and the end of the strange business of ‘Santa Claus’ came on another Christmas Eve, when he dropped in to see the Fords and express his friendship and good wishes.  They’d quite slipped back into the old, kindly understanding, and Joseph felt long since convinced that his stern dealing had been the salvation of the man—­a fact Teddy himself often declared, without shame.  They cared for him a lot by now, and Minnie never tired of singing his praises, and the child never felt a day well spent if his friend didn’t come into it.

Joey was in bed and asleep before Pegram called in his character of ’Santa Claus’; but he’d not forgot his gift and produced a fine box of sweets, to be put on top of the child’s stocking along with a Christmas card.  He looked in on sleeping Joey also and smiled to see the child in the land of dreams with his dog asleep beside him.  And then he gave Minnie a gift also—­a piece of very fine cloth to make herself a gown.  And he promised to come and eat his Christmas dinner along with them, which Joseph insisted he should do.  Ford was on night duty at the time and he left the house with the old poacher and saw him to his own home, while good words passed between them.  Then young Ford went to his beat and wondered as he walked at such a fine reformation, and felt proud of himself to think he’d had a hand in it.  Yet, though seldom it came uppermost in his thoughts, by some chance, the ancient, awful look on Teddy’s face rose to his mind that Christmas Eve.  Joseph had a theory, sure founded on Scripture, and he stoutly believed that the poacher had harboured a devil in him in the past.

“Yet now without a doubt it has been cast out,” thought Joseph, “and no man will ever see it look out of his eyes no more, because it have gone, thank God.”

His duty done he went home to rest; but the man’s sleep was broken just after peep-o’-day by the awfullest scream ever he heard.

His child it was.  Joey slept in a little room alongside his parents and, of course, Minnie was up to him like a flash of lightning, with Joseph after her.  He said at a later time that ‘Santa Claus’ had got in his dreams and he had suffered all night from a great uneasiness; but he was sleeping sound enough when, just after six o’clock, the child screamed and screamed again.  And still he screamed when his mother got to him and his father followed after, stopping only to light a candle.

Poor Joey was out of bed with his mother’s arms round him when his father got there; and on the bed lay Teddy’s box of sweets scattered over the cover-lid, with the Christmas stocking dragged up also, but its contents not yet explored.  The sweeties came first, and Joey had opened them and now he screamed and pointed and screamed again, but for the moment couldn’t speak.  He pointed into one corner of his little cubby-hole, and then the tears came flooding his cheeks and he stopped screaming and clung to his mother and wept as if his heart would break.