"What else has happened now?" she asked in the resigned tone of one who is prepared for any tidings however grievous and hard to bear. "I decline to furnish the harrowing details," he replied. "Suffice it to say that one rift shows in the encompassing clouds. In certain local quarters our intentions may be misinterpreted, that I grant you; it would be wasting words to claim otherwise. But today, mark you, I struck the trail of at least one prospective beneficiary who'll surely respond to our overtures with gratitude. He's going to be our reward--perhaps our only one--for making this trip." "After certain recent experiences I'd love to meet him." "Your desire shall be gratified. Let me tell you about him: You remember that starved-looking shabby chap that we've seen several times plowing past here through the drifts on his way to the village or back again? And always alone?" "Yes, I do. We were speaking of him yesterday, saying how forlorn he seemed and how solitary." "That's our candidate. The name is Sisson. He came into the post-office an hour ago and I got a good look at him--at close range he's even more melancholy than he is viewed from a distance--and after he was gone I asked a few discreet questions about him. He's a mystery. About six weeks ago he moved into a tumble-down cabin about a mile up the mountain behind this clearing and he leads a sort of solitary hermit existence up there. Nobody ever goes to see him and he never comes to see anybody and nobody knows anything about him except that occasionally he gets an official-looking letter from Washington. The postmistress told me that much." "I believe I can guess." Mrs. Bugbee's voice warmed sympathetically. "He's probably a poor shell-shocked veteran that has hid himself away on account of his nervous condition. And he's been writing to the Government trying to get it to do something about his pension or his disability allowance or something--poor neglected hero! I just feel it that I'm right about him. You know yourself, Clem, how my intuition works sometimes?" "Well, in a way I rather jumped at that conclusion too," said Mr. Bugbee. "So I dusted out and overtook the nominee and introduced myself and walked along with him. As a matter of fact I just left him. I invited him in but he declined. He behaved as though he distrusted me, but before I quit I succeeded in getting him to promise faithfully that he'd drop in on us late on Christmas Eve. I realized that he wouldn't care to show himself among the crowd down at the hall." "I think that's a splendid arrangement," applauded Mrs. Bugbee. "Just perfectly splendid! And the next thing is, what are we going to give him?" "Not too much. We don't want him to get the idea that we look on him as an object of charity. Just one timely, suitable small present--a token, if you get what I mean; that would be my notion." "Mine, too," chorused Mrs. Bugbee. "But the question is, what?"