Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/138



was so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded glass.

Ostrander, with his blood like ice within his veins, yearned for a Scriptural purgatory with red fire and flame. To be warm would be heaven. It was a wise old Dante who had made hell cold!

As he crossed the threshold of his filthy tenement he felt for the first time a sense of its shelter. Within its walls there was something that approached warmth, and in his room at the top there was a bed with a blanket.

Making his way toward the bed and its promise of comfort, he was stopped on the second stairway by a voice which came out of the dark.

"Mr. Tony, you didn't see our tree."

Peering down, he answered the voice: "I was going up to get warm." 132