If there was anything that Grover Cleveland liked better than candy, it was more candy, and though he was unlearned in the letter of the Golden Rule its spirit was inherent in his nature. So, although the storekeeper had laid in an extra supply for the holiday trade (it was all in sticks, the kind in vogue when grandmas were little girls), when our small Santa Claus had made his purchases there was none left in stock and by the time material for seventeen calico gowns had been measured off, the storekeeper, among whose mental endowments the commercial instinct was not prominent, had persuaded himself that it was a crying injustice that the well-filled shelves of which he had been so proud should have been depleted at one purchase. As much chagrined as pitiful, he watched his opportunity, and when Grover Cleveland, who was “toting” his packages from the store to the wagon where his grandfather sat, was gathering up his last armful he called him to a rear window. “Do you see that ar woman toilin’ up the mountain with a poke on her back?” “Ye-e-s!” cried the child, “and she’s got a little boy with her a heap littler than me!” “That woman’s yer Aunt Calliny; and that ar little boy’s your own cousin. Don’t you think one of them caliker frocks ought to go to her and some of that candy to little Jakey? Why, he’s named for your gran’daddy.” The loyal little grandson turned away dispiritedly saying only: “She done gran’daddy mean.” “And that ar little feller’s shoes is the raggedest you ever see,” this last remark was flung after the boy who was making a rapid exit. The Ledbetter homestead was some distance from the highroad behind a screen of hills, and an old shed into which the afternoon sun shone with warm approval afforded privacy for the trimming of the tree. Though one pair of hands trembled with age and one pair with eagerness, as early as the twenty-second of December it stood in glorious completeness. The calico frocks, tightly rolled and tied with twine, swung from the stoutest branches, while the twigs bore fruit of plug tobacco and candy in wasteful and bewildering abundance. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five,” counted the tired little Santa Claus as he lay on his bed that night. Three æons the days seemed to him and he sighed himself off to the land of Nod. The old man too slipped smoothly off to sleep, but he sighed as he went to think that time flies so fast. Dixie took no note of time, but before morning he took note of a bear that came nosing about the premises, attracted by the smell of sweets, and he barked so frantically as to bring the old man upon the spot armed with a musket that had seen service in ’61. Bruin retired from the scene with a leaden Christmas gift under his hide and gran’daddy wrapped himself in a tattered cloak of army gray and patrolled till morning. He felt hardly equal to two more nights of keeping guard, so he said to his grandson over their early breakfast: