"I--I'm afraid I can't stop!" muttered Calvin; and he hung his head as he spoke, for a dry voice was saying in his ear, "Put this straight to yourself; are you running a candy route or an orphan asylum?" "Oh! if Mittie May would only come!" cried the lame woman. "I'll _have_ to trouble you, sir; it won't take you long." Calvin mumbled something about calling again. "No!" cried Miss Fidely. "There'd be no use in your calling again; that's all I can save in a year, and there's no more--" She stopped short, and the blood rushed into her thin face. "No!" she said after a pause. "I can't take the burial money, even for the children. Oh! you kind, good man, take down the bags, and take your candy back!" "I've got to see to my hoss!" cried Calvin irritably. "Hear him hollerin'? Jest wait a half a minute--" he sneaked out of the door, closed it carefully behind him, and bolted for his sleigh. He snatched the nose-bag from Hossy's nose, the robe from his back; clambering hastily in, he cast a guilty glance around him, and saw--Mittie May, standing a few paces off, staring at him round-eyed. "Here!" he cried. "You tell her I ain't feelin' real well, and I've got to get home. Tell her--tell her my name's Santy Claus, and my address is the North Pole. And--look here! tell her Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and the same to you! Gitty up, hossy! gitty up!" and laying his whip over the astonished flanks of the brown horse, Calvin Parks fled down the road as if Bluecher and the Prussians were after him. CHAPTER XIII MERRY CHRISTMAS "But that ain't the end of the story, Miss Hands!" said Calvin Parks, after telling as much as he thought proper of the foregoing events. "That ain't the end. This mornin' I stopped down along a piece to wish Merry Christmas to Aaron Tarbox's folks, and I left hossy standin' while I ran into the house. I stayed longer than I intended--you know how 'tis when there's children hangin' round--and when I come out, you may call me mate to a mud-scow if there warn't a feller with his head and shoulders clear inside the back of my cart. I can't tell you how, but some way of it, it come over me in a flash who the feller was. I don't know as ever I moved quicker in my life. I had him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his pants, and out of that and standin' on his head in a snow-drift before he could have winked more than once, certin. "'Have you got three ones and a two,' I says, 'belongin' to a lady as sits in a cart, 'bout four mile from here? 'cause if you have, and was keepin' them for the owner, I'll save you the trouble,' I says. He couldn't answer real well, his head bein' in the drift, so I went through his pockets, and sure enough there they was, three ones and a two, just as she said." "My goodness!" cried Mary Sands. "What did you do?"