He caught the boy roughly by the arm, jerked rather than led him across the street, and thrust him bodily among a crowd of astonished clerks who stood at the door of a clothing-house.

“Take this young vagrant and put him into new boots, with woolen socks, some kind of a gray jacket and trowsers, and a hat that’s fit for a civilized age.”

Seeing that Redfield was really in earnest, the proprietor obeyed the order promptly, and in half an hour the boy reappeared, rather red, a little uncertain, but decidedly altered for the better.

“Now go,” cried the cynic, with a smile, and a shake of his hand, “and thank your stars the fool-killer did not come along before you.”

“Nineteen dollars and a half!  Bless me! what am I coming to?  It may be laying up treasures in heaven; but, by Jove, I had rather see it than hear tell of it.”

The Refrain.

It certainly was the dreariest 24th of December an unhappy boy ever had the misery of witnessing.  In a vain endeavor to get up an excitement, I expended my last fire-cracker; but the continuous drizzle drowned out every one.  It was only four o’clock, and yet the fog hung like a pall over the windows, and the gas-men were lighting the lamps in the street.  My mother, and an old schoolmate, Mrs. Mary Morton, adjourned to the privacy of her bedroom; and, a pet navigation enterprise, conducted in the gutter, having resulted in shipwreck and a severe sore throat, I also was permitted to enjoy its cosey quiet.  John Redfield came in as the evening advanced.  He had been sick; and my mother, wheeling the lounge near the fire, made him lie down and have something warm to drink.  He and Mrs. Morton were intimate with the family from my earliest recollection.

The four, in their childhood, lived near each other, among the picturesque hills of Western Pennsylvania.  They went to the same school, played in the same woods, and now, in mature life, retained the warm regard of the days gone by.  I say four; for Mr. Redfield had a sister,—­Mrs. Hague, a pale, lovely little lady, who at one time visited my mother very often.  There had been some estrangement between her and her brother, the particulars of which I never knew.  She had married, years before, a worthless kind of a man, who kept a shoestore; but he became involved, the store was sold out by the sheriff and since then both were in a manner lost.

John Redfield, though an abrupt man, and rather eccentric, had as kind a heart as any one I ever knew.  He was connected with a newspaper in the city, and wrote wonderful articles about police courts, that, somehow, sounded more like sermons than stories.  In my early days, before Gutenberg and his movable types came within the scope of my knowledge, I believed he printed out the whole edition with a lead-pencil, and entertained most exalted ideas of his capacity.  He had a passion for giving boys painted boats.  I must have received twenty—­all exactly