"It was nothing, Bab!" said her husband. "How nervous you are!" Even as he spoke the sound was repeated, and he himself started now. "I'm catching your nervousness, Bab," he said, with a short laugh. "The wind is the very deuce to-night." At that moment a little girl in her nightgown ran out from the adjoining room, and with a gleeful cry sprang into his arms, her long yellow hair spreading itself over his shoulder. "You see, dear old papa, Bab _wasn't_ asleep!" she cried, covering his face with kisses. "And why _isn't_ Bab asleep?" her father said, with an assumption of sternness. "Because she _can't_ sleep. The wind makes such a noise in the pines, and the icicles keep falling off the eaves, and make such a pretty tinkling on the snow. Do you hear it? Hark!" "The wind increases fearfully," said the wife, going to the window and drawing the shade. "It is a bitter night." "Bad enough for anybody to be out in," said Dixon, with the comfortable air of one safely housed. He moved his chair to the fire, and began fondling and playing with the pretty child on his knee. Her little face, however, had grown suddenly grave. "What is it, pussy?" asked her father; "it looks so serious all at once." "I was thinking," said the child, slowly; "I was wondering where the poor old man I saw up on the hill to-day would sleep to-night. Such a poor, poor man, so old and sick and ragged." "Bless the chick! What is she talking about now?" "Some man she saw to-day when she was on the hill coasting with the others," the mother said. "Some tramp, I suppose." "I have not heard of any in town," said Dixon, with sudden thoughtfulness. "It isn't the season for tramps. Oh!" he added, carelessly, as the child continued to look in his face, "some worthless old vagabond, I suppose, dearie. Don't fret your little heart about him. He'll find a warm nest in somebody's hay-mow, no doubt." But little Bab shook her head. "I don't think he was bad," she said, softly, "only very sick and sorry. He asked me my name, and when I told him he laughed out so queer! And then I showed him our house, and told him maybe you'd give him some money, and then he laughed again, and then I--I got scared because the other girls had all run away, and I ran away, too." Her father had listened with strange intentness. His playfulness was extinguished, and his face looked all at once careworn and troubled. "You're a silly little lass," he said, after a moment's silence, "and you must not talk to strange men who ask questions. They might carry you off, you know."