“There, I’ll lend you one of mine, then,” said Auntie, graciously; and, going to the chest of drawers in the corner, she drew forth a pair of her own substantial stockings, and presented one to the child. As the children retired for the night, Henery paused beside her for a moment. “You won’t truly go to-morrow, Auntie?” he pleaded coaxingly. Mrs. Sibley paused a moment, and in the interval the sound of the sexton’s slouching step was heard without, and his hand fumbled at the latch. “It do all depend on Father, Henery,” said Mrs. Sibley, raising her voice slightly. “He do know very well as I do want a change.” Mr. Foyle entered, looking weary and depressed, and sat down in his customary chair. Mrs. Sibley cast a searching glance round the kitchen, and, possessing herself of a pair of spotted china dogs which adorned the mantel-piece, added them to her collection, and retired. The sexton lit his pipe, and had been smoking in gloomy silence for some time, when Mrs. Sibley re-entered. Going to the dresser, and opening a drawer, she abstracted a number of oranges, nuts, crackers, and other such wares, and filled her apron with them. “What be them for?” inquired the sexton diffidently. “Why, they be surprises for the childern,” returned she. “Ah,” rejoined John Foyle, “surprises, be they?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Sibley, “they do look for ’em reg’lar, they do. I do always fill their stockin’s wi’ ’em every Christmas.” “Oh,” said the sexton, “put their surprises in their stockin’s, do ’ee?” Mrs. Sibley nodded and withdrew, leaving John sunk in profound thought. “This ’ere be a vale o’ tears,” he remarked presently, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He rose, went to the table, turned up the lamp a little more, and fetching pen, ink and paper from the window-sill on which they usually reposed, sat down to indite a letter. It cost him much labour and thought, but, after all, it was a brief enough document. When completed it ran thus: “If Mrs. Sibley will meet Mr. Foyle in the churchyard to-morrow morning about nine o’clock when nobody’s about she will hear of something to your advantage. Yours truly, John Foyle.” “I couldn’t,” said the sexton to himself, “put the question in any sort of public way. The childern is in and out, and the neighbours mid pop in. The churchyard is best and most nat’ral.” He folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and addressed it; then, looking round, descried hanging over a chair-back one of Mrs. Sibley’s stockings--the fellow to the one she had lent little Rosanna. “The very thing!” exclaimed John. “The Christmas surprises do always go in stockin’s. It’ll be a surprise for she, I d’ ’low--not but what she didn’t look for it,” he added with a grim chuckle. He placed the letter in the stocking, fastened it securely with a loop of string, and, going cautiously upstairs, slung it over Mrs. Sibley’s door-handle. He paused a moment, winking to himself, and then made his way on tiptoe to his own room.