Page:Our American Holidays - Christmas.djvu/323

Rh paint and tinsel. One of them was broken; another, I fear, was irretrievably ruined by water; and on the third—ah me! there was a cruel spot.

"It don't look like much, that’s a fact," said Dick ruefully…"But it’s the best we could do…Take ’em Old Man, and put ’em in his stocking, and tell him—tell him, you know—hold me, Old Man—" The Old Man caught at his sinking figure. "Tell him," said Dick, with a weak little laugh,—"tell him Sandy Claus has come."

And even so, bedraggled, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm hanging helplessly at his side. Santa Claus came to Simpson’s Bar, and fell fainting on the first threshold. The Christmas dawn came slowly after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of ineffable love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson’s Bar that the whole mountain, as if caught in a generous action, blushed to the skies.