He lived as foxes do. Things died that he might eat; rabbits, pheasants, chickens, field-mice. He stalked all things less strong and clever than himself. A cruel cycle, but it is the law of the wild, something that you and I cannot alter. He enjoyed the summers best, with their longer days, fuller larders, sweet wood odors, long naps in the cool shadows of the thicket. But winter came, with its hardships and its cold, a cold that little foxes feel the same as you and I. But it was this cold that stimulated and silkened his fur, made it this wondrous, prized thing. Then I came, and he ceased to be what he was--a hunter of smaller, weaker things--and became what you see here: a finer thing--a token. Your kind heart need find no cruelty in a merciful shot that spelled no pain and that by stopping him assured that gentler, weaker things will live on and on. _And he_ will be glad, too, as not _only_ is he forever freed from cold and hunger and stark fear, but his is to be a tender office. Will you lay it at your bedside, that each night it may cushion your last step at slumbertime, and each morning soften the first contact between the vistas of dreamland and the less yielding surfaces of life to which we wake. So even the things of the wild are made to serve. To serve--is that not the law of man? My part in it? But little: none other than I will have touched it till it reaches your dear hands. I shaped it, wrought to preserve its beauties that it might give you pleasure. To give pleasure--is that not the law of love? A very, very Merry Christmas! DICK. He sent his gift, at about nine o'clock. In gay mood, he wandered about the great house: entered the kitchen where Fanny was singeing the Christmas turkey: returned to the living room to throw a fresh log in the wide fireplace. His mood was too expansive for indoors. He donned short coat and thick cap, but as he passed out of the gate a scared little lad, a foreigner, rushed up breathlessly and begged him to come--trouble was brewing on the southside. His questions elicited meager information. Excited, the lad relapsed so often into his native tongue that Terry could make nothing of his tale. Hand in hand they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the reefered figure that smiled up at him through the falling flakes, Tony's dark scowl faded as he reached out his powerful hands and with a joyous shout fairly lifted Terry into the house.