"I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Gilton, that I had nothing whatever to do with the death of your dog." Mr. Gilton felt the ground slipping away from under his very feet. That dog had been his piece of resistance, as it were. "I wouldn't have poisoned him," went on Mr. Bilton, "for a hundred dollars. But," he added, with a queer little smile, "I wasn't going to tell you so, you know." "Of course you wasn't," exclaimed Mr. Gilton, hurriedly, with a touch of that unholy excitement that a lapse from grammar imparts. "We wouldn't any of us," asserted Walter. "No," said Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia. Then it came out that the whole family had rather admired the dog than otherwise. It was here that John did really come in, his entrance sounding very much as had Mr. Gilton's. He nearly fell over when he saw the visitor, but he had time to pull himself together, for Cora Cordelia had snatched that moment for showing Mr. Gilton her gifts for the family, and he was bound hand and foot with helplessness. Then they all came and showed him their gifts. While he examined them Mr. and Mrs. Bilton carefully averted their eyes and gazed hard at the opposite wall, while Cora Cordelia urged him, in stage whispers, not to let them suspect. It was pitiable the state to which he was reduced. Of course resisting this Christmas enthusiasm was out of the question. To be sure it came over him once with startling force, as she showed him a toy water-wheel, that went by sand,--which she had purchased for her father at a phenomenally low rate because the wheel could not be made to go,--that Cora Cordelia was the very child that he had fallen over as she came hastening out of a toy-shop with a queerly shaped bundle, the day before, and so been further imbittered towards Christmas. Susan had purchased a cup and ball for her mother, and as she went out of the room for a moment, insisted upon Mr. Gilton's trying to do it and see what fun it was. If Mr. Gilton lives to be a hundred he will never forget the mingled feelings with which he awkwardly tried to get that senseless ball into that idiotic cup. At last he stood up to go--it was after six o'clock--and they went with him to the door, and wished him Merry Christmas, and sent Merry Christmas to Mrs. Gilton, and said good-night several times, and he stumbled on through the snow, this time towards his own door. It had stopped snowing as suddenly and quietly as it had begun, and the stars had come out. He gazed up at them,--something he very rarely did. They seemed a part of Christmas. Just before he turned in at his own gate, he looked back at the Bilton house and shook his fist at it, but the expression on his face was such that the very same newsboy who had accosted him earlier failed utterly to recognize him and was emboldened to offer him a paper. He too was pushing his way home with two papers left, in a somewhat dispirited way.