The burgomaster heard the outer door close behind them, and turned wearily to his mail. The count had been greatly wrought up over the depredations of Black Hans and his kind, and would insist on an example being made of him. Bad blood always came of these cases, for the game law was not well thought of in the land in these democratic days. There lingered yet resentfully the recollection of the days not so long since when to take "the king's deer" brought a man to the block, or to the treadmill for life. And the family of this fellow Black Hans, what was to become of them? The burgomaster's gaze wandered abstractedly over the envelop he was opening and rested on an unfamiliar stamp. He held it up and took a closer look. Oh, yes; the new Christmas stamp. He knew it well enough, with its design of the great sanatorium for tubercular children that had been built out of the proceeds of other years' sales. It was a pretty picture, and a worthy cause. In all Denmark there was none that so laid hold of the popular fancy. It was the word "Yule," with its magic, that did it. There was no other inscription on the stamp, and none was needed. As his glance dwelt upon it, a curious change came over the picture. It was no longer the great white house that he saw, with its many bright lights, but a wretched hut, with a crooked chimney, and rags stopping a broken pane in its only window. The dull glow of a tallow dip struggled through the grime that lay thick upon the unbroken panes. Against one the face of a child was pressed, a poor, pinched face that spoke of cold and hunger and weary waiting for some one who was always late. Something that was very much like real pain made the burgomaster wince as the words of Black Hans came back to him, "I didn't have none--for me young ones." He shook his head impatiently. Why, then, did he not work for them, instead of laying it up against his betters? The sober little face at the window kept looking out into the night, straight past the burgomaster, as if he were not there. How many of them in that hut? Seven, eight, nine, the burgomaster counted mentally; or was it ten ragged, underfed little ones, with the careworn mother who slaved from sunrise till night for them and her rascal husband? That child Annie who limped so pitifully, the district physician had told him that very morning, had tuberculosis of the hip-joint, and it was killing her slowly. Poor child! Surely this was she at the window. Her face looked pinched and small; yet she must be nearly eleven.