"My bed won't fit him, papa! But he can have the bed in the guests' chamber. It is a great bed, uncle, a big, big bed!" "I don't believe I care to go to bed," said Juan. "Not just now at any rate, I am so comfortable here." "That pain has gone, hasn't it, uncle?" whispered Manolita, kissing and stroking his hand. "Yes, dear, yes,--God bless you! Nothing pains me now. I am happy, very happy! Only I feel sleepy, so sleepy that I can hardly raise my eyelids." "Never mind us; sleep if you feel like it," said Santiago. "Yes, uncle, sleep," repeated the children. * * * * * And Juan fell asleep,--but he wakened in another world. The next morning, at dawn, two policemen stumbled against a corpse in the snow. The doctor of the charity hospital pronounced it a case of congealing of the blood. As one of the officers turned him over, face upward,-- "Look, Jiménez," said he; "he seems to be laughing." [Illustration] A CHRISTMAS IN THE FOREST. From the French of ANDRÉ THEURIET. Christmas Eve that year was bleak and cold, and the village seemed benumbed. The houses were closed hermetically, and so were the stables, from which came the muffled sound of animals chewing the cud. From time to time the clacking of wooden shoes on the hardened ground resounded through the deserted streets, then a door was hastily opened and closed, and all relapsed into silence. It was evident from the thick smoke rising through the chimneys into the gray air that every family was huddled around its hearth while the housewife prepared the Christmas supper. Stooping forward, with their legs stretched out to the fire, their countenances beaming with pleasure at the prospect of the morrow's festival and the foretaste of the fat and juicy blood-sausages, the peasants laughed at the north wind that swept the roads, at the frost that powdered the trees of the forest, and the ice that seemed to vitrify the streams and the river. Following their example, my friend Tristan and I spent the livelong day in the old house of the Abbatiale at the corner of the hearth, smoking our pipes and reading poetry. At sundown we had grown tired of seclusion and determined to venture out. "The forest must be a strange sight with this heavy frost," said I to Tristan. "Suppose we take a turn through the wood after supper; besides, I must see the sabotiers from Courroy about a little matter." So we pulled on our gaiters, stuffed our pipes, wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and mufflers, and penetrated into the wood.