Bread On The Waters

Bread On The Waters

A Washington christmas

[No. This story also is "Invented Example." But it
is founded on facts. It is a pleasure to me, writing
fifty-four years after the commission intrusted to me by
the late Mrs. Fales, to say that that is a real name, and
that her benevolence at a distance is precisely
represented here.

Perhaps the large history of the world would be
differently written but for that kindness of hers.

I was a very young clergyman, and the remittance she
made to me was the first trust of the same kind which had
ever been confided to me.]

CHAPTER I

MAKE READY

"Only think, Matty, papa passed right by me when I was
sitting with my back to the fire and stitching away on
his book-mark without my once seeing him! But he was
so busy talking to mamma that he never saw what I was
doing, and I huddled it under a newspaper before he
came back again. Well, I have got papa's present done,
but I cannot keep out of mamma's way. Matty, dear, if
I will sit in the sun and keep a shawl on, may I not
sit in your room and work? It is not one bit cold
there. Really, Matty, it is a great deal warmer
than it was yesterday."

"Dear child," said Matty, to whom everybody came so
readily for advice and help, "I can do better for you
than that. You shall come into the study; papa will be
away all the morning, and I will have the fire kept up
there,--and mamma shall never come near you."

All this, and a thousand times more of plotting and
counterplotting, was going on among four children and
their elders in a comfortable, free-and-easy seeming
household in Washington, as the boys and girls, young men
and young women were in the last agonies of making ready
for Christmas. Matty is fully entitled to be called a
young woman, when we see her. She has just passed her
twenty-first birthday. But she looks as fresh and pretty
as when she was seventeen, and certainly she is a great
deal pleasanter though she be wiser. She is the oldest
of the troop. Tom, the next, is expected from Annapolis
this afternoon, and Beverly from Charlotte. Then come
four boys and girls whose ages and places the reader must
guess at as we go on.

The youngest of the family were still young enough to
write the names of the presents which they would be glad
to receive, or to denote them by rude hieroglyphs, on
large sheets of paper. They were wont to pin up these
sheets on certain doors, which, by long usage in this
free-and-easy family, had come to be regarded as the
bulletin-boards of the establishment. Well-nigh
every range of created things had some representation on
these bulletins,--from an ambling pony round to a "boot-
buttenner," thus spelled out by poor Laura, who was
constantly in disgrace, because she always appeared
latest at the door when the children started for church,
to ride, or for school. The youngsters still held to the
theory of announcing thus their wants in advance. Horace
doubted whether he were not too old. But there was so
much danger that nobody would know how much he needed a
jig-saw, that he finally compromised with his dignity,
wrote on a virgin sheet of paper, "gig-saw," signed his
name, "Horace Molyneux, Dec. 21," and left his other
presents to conjecture.

And of course at the very end, as Santa Claus and his
revels were close upon them, while the work done had been
wonderful, that which we ought to have done but which we
had left undone, was simply terrible. Here were pictures
that must be brought home from the frame-man, who had
never pretended he would send them; there were ferns and
lycopodiums in pots which must be brought home from the
greenhouse; here were presents for other homes, which
must not only be finished, but must be put up in paper
and sent before night, so as to appear on other trees.
Every one of these must be shown to mamma, an approved by
her and praised; and every one must be shown to dear
Matty, and praised and approved by her. And yet by
no accident must Matty see her own presents or dream that
any child has remembered her, or mamma see HERS or
think herself remembered.

And Matty has all her own little list to see to,
while she keeps a heart at leisure from itself to soothe
and sympathize. She has to correct the mistakes, to
repair the failures, to respect the wonder, to refresh
the discouragement, of each and all the youngsters. Her
own Sunday scholars are to be provided with their
presents. The last orders are to be given for the
Christmas dinners of half-a-dozen families of vassals,
mostly black or of some shade of black, who never forgot
their vassalage as Christmas came round. Turkey,
cranberry, apples, tea, cheese, and butter must be sent
to each household of these vassals, as if every member
were paralyzed except in the muscles of the jaw. But,
all the same, Matty or her mother must be in readiness
all the morning and afternoon to receive the visits of
all the vassals,--who, so far as this form of homage
went, did not seem to be paralyzed at all.

For herself, Matty took possession of the dining-
room, as soon as she could clear it of the breakfast
equipage, of the children and of the servants, and here,
with pen and ink, with wrapping-paper and twine, with
telegraph blanks and with the directory, and with Venty
as her Ariel messenger--not so airy and quick as Ariel,
but quite as willing--Matty worked her wonders, and
gave her audiences, whether to vassals from without or
puzzled children from within.

Venty was short for Ventidius. But this name, given
in baptism, was one which Venty seldom heard.

Matty corded up this parcel, and made Venty cord up
that; wrote this note of compliment, that of inquiry,
that of congratulation, and sent Venty on this, that, and
another errand with them; relieved Flossy's anxieties and
poor Laura's in ways which have been described; made sure
that the wagon should be at the station in ample time for
Beverly's arrival; and at last, at nearly one o'clock,
called Aunty Chloe (who was in waiting on everybody as a
superserviceable person, on the pretence that she was
needed), bade Aunty pick up the scraps, sweep the floor,
and bring the room to rights. And so, having attended to
everybody beside herself, to all their wishes and hopes
and fears, poor Matty--or shall I say, dear Matty--ran
off to her own room, to finish her own presents and make
her own last preparations.

She had kept up her spirits as best she could all the
morning, but, at any moment when she was alone, her
spirits had fallen again. She knew it, and she knew why.
And now she could not hold out any longer. She and her
mother, thank God, never had any secrets. And as she ran
by her mother's door she could not help tapping, to be
sure if she had come home.

Yes, she had come home. "Come in!" and Matty ran in.

Her mother had not even taken off her hat or her
gloves. She had flung herself on the sofa, as if her
walk had been quite too much for her; her salts and her
handkerchief were in her hands, and when she saw it was
Matty, as she had hoped when she spoke, she would not
even pretend she had not been in tears.

In a moment Matty was on her knees on the floor by
the sofa, and somehow had her left arm round about her
mother's neck.

"Dear, dear mamma! What is it, what is the matter?"

"My dear, dear Matty," replied her mother, just
succeeding in speaking without sobs, and speaking the
more easily because she stroked the girl's hair and
caressed her as she spoke, "do not ask, do not try to
know. You will know, if you do not guess, only too soon.
And now the children will be better, and papa will get
through Christmas better, if you do not know, my
darling."

"No, dear mamma," said Matty, crossing her mother's
purpose almost for the first time that she remembered,
but wholly sure that she was right in doing so,--"No,
dear mamma, it is not best so. Indeed, it is not, mamma!
I feel in my bones that it is not!" This she said with
a wretched attempt to smile, which was the more ghastly
because the tears were running down from both their
faces.

"You see I have tried, mamma. I knew all day
yesterday that something was wrong, and at breakfast this
morning I knew it. And I have had to hold up--with the
children and all these people--with the feeling that any
minute the hair might break and the sword fall. And I
know I shall do better if you tell me. You see the boys
will be here before dark, and of course they will see,
and what in the world shall I say to them?"

"What, indeed?" said her poor mother. "Terrible it
is, dear child, because your father is so wretched. I
have just come from him. He would not let me stay, and
yet for the minute I was there, I saw that no one else
could come in to goad him. Dear, dear papa, he is so
resolute and brave, and yet any minute I was afraid that
he would break a blood-vessel and fall dead before me.
Oh, Matty, Matty, my darling, it is terrible!"

And this time the poor woman could not control
herself longer, but gave way to her sobs, and her voice
fairly broke, so that she was inarticulate, as she laid
her cheek against her daughter's on the sofa.

"What is terrible? Dear mamma, you must tell me!"

"I think I must tell you, Matty, my darling. I
believe if I cannot tell some one, I shall die."

Then Mrs. Molyneux told the whole horror to Matty.
Here was her husband charged with the grossest
plunder of the treasury, and now charged even in the
House of Representatives. It had been whispered about
before, and had been hinted at in some of the lower
newspapers, but now even a committee of Congress had
noticed it, and had "given him an opportunity to clear
himself." There was no less a sum than forty-seven
thousand dollars, in three separate payments, charged to
him at the Navy Department as long ago as the second and
third years of the Civil War. At the Navy they had his
receipts for it. Not that he had been in that department
then any more than he was now. He was then chief clerk
in the Bureau of Internal Improvement, as he was now
Commissioner there. But this was when the second Rio
Grande expedition was fitted out; and from Mr. Molyneux's
knowledge of Spanish, and his old connection with the
Santa Fe trade, this particular matter had been intrusted
to him.

"Yes, dear mamma!"

"Well, papa has it all down on his own cashbook; that
book he carries in his breast-pocket. There are the
three payments, and then all the transfers he made to the
different people. One, was that old white-haired
Spaniard with the harelip, who used to come here at the
back door, so that he should not be seen at the
Department. But it was before you remember. The others
were in smaller sums. But the whole thing was done in
three weeks, and then the expedition sailed, and papa had
enough else to think of, and has never thought of it
since, till ten or fifteen days ago, when somebody in the
Eleventh Auditor's office discovered this charge, and his
receipt for this money."

"Well, dear mamma?"

"Well, dear child, that is all, but that now the
newspapers have got hold of it, and the Committee on
Retrenchment, who are all new men, with their reputations
to make, have got hold of it, and some of them really
think, you know, that papa has stolen the money!" And
she broke down crying again.

"But he can show his accounts, mamma!" What are his
accounts worth? He must show the vouchers, as they are
called. He must show these people's receipts, and what
has become of these people; what they did with the money.
He must show everything. Well, when the `Copperhead'
first spoke of it--that was a fortnight ago--papa was
really pleased. For he said it would be a good chance to
bring out a piece of war history. He said that in our
Bureau we had never had any credit for the Rio Grande
successes, that they were all our thunder; because
THEN he could laugh about this horrid thing. He said
the Navy had taken all the boners, while we deserved them
all. And he said if these horrid `Copperhead' and
`Argus' and `Scorpion' people would only publish the
vouchers half as freely as they published the charges, we
should get a little of the credit that was our due."

"Well, mamma, and what is the trouble now?"

"Why, papa was so sure that he would do nothing until
an official call came. But on Monday it got into
Congress. That hairy man from the Yellowstone brought in
a resolution or something, and the Committee was ordered
to inquire. And when the order came down, papa told Mr.
Waltsingham to bring him the papers, and, Matty, the
papers were not there!"

"Stolen!" cried Matty, understanding the crisis for
the first time.

"Yes--perhaps--or lost--hidden somewhere. You have
no idea of the work of those days night work and all
that. Many a time your father did not undress for a
week."

"And now he must remember where he put a horrid pile
of papers, eleven, twelve years ago. Mamma, that pile is
stolen. That odious Greenhithe stole it. He lives in
Philadelphia now, and he has put up these newspapers to
this lie."

Mr. Greenhithe was an underclerk in the Internal
Improvement Bureau, who had shown an amount of attention
to Miss Matty, which she had disliked and had refused to
receive. She had always said he was bad and would come
to a bad end, and when he was detected in a low trick,
selling stationery which he had stolen from the supply
room, and was discharged in disgrace, Matty had said it
was good enough for him.

These were her reasons for pronouncing at once
that he had stolen the vouchers and had started the
rumors.

"I do not know. Papa does not know. He hardly tries
to guess. He says either way it is bad. If the vouchers
are stolen, he is in fault, for he is responsible for the
archives; if he cannot produce the vouchers, then all the
country is down on him for stealing. I only hope," said
poor Mrs. Molyneux, "that they won't say our poor old
wagon is a coach and six;" and this time she tried to
smile.

And now she had told her story. All last night,
while the children were asleep, Mr. Molyneux had been at
the office, even till four o'clock in the morning, taking
old dusty piles from their lairs and searching for those
wretched vouchers. And mamma had been waiting--shall one
not say, had been weeping?--here at home. That was the
reason poor papa had looked so haggard at breakfast this
morning.

This was all mamma had to tell. She had been to the
office this morning, but papa would not let her stay. He
must see all comers, just as if nothing had happened, was
happening, or was going to happen.

Well! Matty did make her mother take off her jacket
and her hat and her gloves. She even made her drink a
glass of wine and lie down. And then the poor girl
retired to her own room, with such appetite as she might
for taking the last stitches in worsted work, for
stippling in the lights into drawings, for writing
the presentation lines in books, and for doing the
thousand little niceties in the way of finishing touches
which she had promised the children to do for them.

Her dominant feeling--yes, it was a dominant passion,
as she knew--was simply rage against this miserable
Greenhithe, this cowardly sneak who was thus taking his
revenge upon her, because she had been so cold to him.
Or was it that he made up to her because he was already
in trouble at the Office and hoped she would clear him
with her father? Either way he was a snake and a
scorpion, but he had worked out for himself a terrible
revenge. Poor Matty! She tried to think what she could
do, how she could help, for that was the habit of her
life. But this was now hard indeed. Her mind would not
now take that turn. All that it would turn to was to the
wretched and worse than worthless question, what
punishment might fall on him for such utter baseness and
wickedness.

All the same the children must have their lunch, and
they must not know that anything was the matter. Oh
dear! this concealment was the worst of all!

So they had their lunch. And poor Matty counselled
again, and helped again, and took the last stitches, and
mended the last breaks, and waited and wondered, and
tried to hope, till at five o'clock an office messenger
came up with this message.

4.45 P.M.
DEAR MATTY,--I shall not come up to dinner. There is
pressing work here. Tell mamma not to sit up for me. I
have my key.
I have no chance to get my things for the children.
Will you see to it? Here is twenty dollars, and if you
need more let them send in the bill. I had only thought
of that jig-saw--was it?--that Horace wants. See that
the dear fellow has a good one.

Love to all and ever yours,

PAPA.

"Poor, dear papa," said Matty aloud, shedding tears
in spite of herself. "To be thinking of jig-saws and
children in all this horrid hunt! As if hunting for
anything was not the worst trial of all, always." And at
once the brave girl took down her wraps and put on her
walking-shoes, that her father's commissions might be met
before their six-o'clock dinner. And she determined that
first of all she would meet Tom at the station.

At the station she met Tom; that was well. Matty had
not been charged to secrecy; that was well. She told him
all the story, not without adding her suspicions, and
giving him some notion of her rage.

And Tom was angry enough,--there was a crumb of
comfort there. But Tom went off on another track. Tom
distrusted the Navy Department. He had been long enough
at Annapolis to doubt the red tape of the bureaus with
which his chiefs had to do. "If the navy had the
money, the navy had the vouchers," that was Tom's theory.
He knew a chief clerk in the navy, and Tom was going at
once round there.

But Matty held him in check at least for the moment.
Whatever else he did, he must come home first; he must
see mamma and he must see the children, and he must have
dinner. She had not told him yet how well he looked, and
how handsome he was.

But after Tom had seen them he slipped off, pretended
he had unfinished preparations to make, and went right to
the Department, forced his way in because he was Mr.
Molyneux's son, and found his poor father with Zeigler,
the chief clerk, still on this wretched and fruitless
overhaul of the old files. Tom stated frankly, in his
off-hand, business-like way, what his theory was.
Neither Zeigler nor Tom's father believed in it in the
least. Tom knew nothing, they said; the Navy paid the
money, but the Navy was satisfied with our receipt, and
should be.

Tom continued to say, "If the Navy paid the money the
Navy must have the vouchers;" and at last, more to be rid
of him than with any hope of the result, Mr. Molyneux let
the eager fellow go round to his friend, Eben Ricketts,
and see if Eben would not give an hour or two of his
Christmas to looking up the thing. Mr. Molyneux even
went so far as to write a frank line to Mr. Ricketts, and
enclosed a letter which he had had that day from the
chairman of the House Committee,--a letter which was
smooth enough in the language, but horrible enough in the
thing.

Ah me! Had not Ricketts read it all already in the
evening "Argus"? He was willing, if he could, to serve.
So he with Tom went round and found the Navy Department
messenger, and opened and lighted up the necessary rooms,
and they spent three hours of their Christmas there.
Meanwhile Beverly had arrived from Norfolk. He had a
frolic with the children, and then called his mother and
Matty away from them.

"What in thunder is the matter?" said the poor boy.

And they told him. How could they help telling him?
And so soon as the story was finished, the boy had his
coat on and was putting on his boots. He went right down
to his father's office, he made old Stratton admit him,
and told his father he too had reported for duty.

CHAPTER II

CHRISTMAS MORNING

And at last Christmas morning dawned,--gray enough and
grim enough.

In that house the general presenting was reserved for
evening after dinner,--when in olden days there had
always been a large Christmas-tree lighted and
dressed for the children and their little friends. As
the children had grown older, and the trees at the
Sunday-school and elsewhere had grown larger, the family
tree had grown smaller, and on this day was to be simply
atypical tree, a little suggestion of a tree, between the
front windows; while most of the presents of every sort
and kind were to be dispersed--where room could be made
for them--in any part of the front parlors. All the
grand ceremonial of present-giving was thus reserved to
the afternoon of Christmas, because then it was certain
papa would be at home, Tom and Beverly would both be
ready, and, indeed, as the little people confessed, they
themselves would have more chance to be quite prepared.

But none the less was the myth of Santa Claus and the
stockings kept up, although that was a business of less
account, and one in which the children themselves had no
share, except to wonder, to enjoy, and to receive. You
will observe that there is a duality in most of the
enjoyments of life,--that if you have a long-expected
letter from your brother who is in Yokohama, by the same
mail or the next mail there comes a letter from your
sister who is in Cawnpore. And so it was of Christmas at
this Molyneux house. Besides the great wonders, like
those wrought out by Aladdin's slave of the lamp, there
were the wonders, less gigantic but not less exquisite,
of the morning hours, wrought out by the slave of
the ring. How this series of wonders came about, the
youngest of the children did not know, and were still
imaginative enough and truly wise enough not to inquire.

While, then, the two young men and their father were
at one or the other Department, now on step-ladders,
handing down dusty old pasteboard boxes, now under
gaslights, running down long indexes with inquiring
fingers and unwinking eyes, Matty and her mother watched
and waited till eleven o'clock came, not saying much of
what was on the hearts of both, but sometimes just
recurring to it, as by some invisible influence,--an
influence which would overcome both of them at the same
moment. For the mother and daughter were as two sisters,
not parted far, even in age, and not parted at all in
sympathy. For occupation, they were wrapping up in thin
paper a hundred barley dogs, cats, eagles, locomotives,
suns, moons, and stars,--with little parcels of nuts,
raisins, and figs, large red apples, and bright Florida
oranges,--all of which were destined to be dragged out of
different stockings at daybreak.

"And now, dear, dear mamma," said Matty, "you will go
to bed,--please do, dear mamma." This was said as she
compelled the last obstinate eagle to accept his fate and
stay in his wrapping-paper, from which he had more than
once struggled out, with the instincts of freedom.

"Please do, dear mamma; I will sort these all
out, and will be quite sure that each has his own.
At least, let us come upstairs together. I will comb
your hair for you; that is one of the little comforts.
And you shall get into bed and see me arrange them, and
if I do it wrong you can tell me."

Poor mamma, she yielded to her--as who does not
yield, and because it was easier to go upstairs than to
stay. And the girl led her up and made herself a toilet
woman indeed, and did put her worn-out mamma into bed,
and then hurried to the laundry, where she was sure she
could find what Diana had been bidden to reserve there--a
pair of clean stockings belonging to each member of the
family. The youngest children, alas, who would need the
most room for their spread-eagles and sugar locomotives,
had the smallest feet and legs. But nature compensates
for all things, and Matty did not fail to provide an
extra pair of her mother's longest stockings for each of
"the three," as the youngest were called in the councils
of their elders. So a name was printed by Santa Claus on
a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY
or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his
bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize
yarn or knitting as familiar. Matty hurried back with
their treasures. She brought from her own room the large
red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by
her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels,
and filled each stocking full.

Dear girl! she had not wrongly guessed. There was
just occupation enough, and just little enough, for the
poor mother's anxious, tired thought. Matty was wise.
She asked fewer and fewer questions; fewer and fewer she
made her journeys to the great high fender, where she
pinned all these stiff models of gouty legs. And when
the last hung there quietly, the girl had the exquisite
satisfaction of seeing that her mother was fast asleep.
She would not leave the room. She turned the gas-light
down to a tiny bead. She slipped off her own frock, put
on her mother's heavy dressing-gown, lay down quietly by
her side without rousing her, and in a little while--for
with those so young this resource is well-nigh sure--she
slept too.

It was five o'clock when she was wakened by her
father's hand. He led her out into his own dressing-
room, and before she spoke she kissed him!

She knew what his answer would be. She knew that
from his heavy face. But all the same she tried to
smile, and she said,

"Found?"

"Found? No, no, dear child, nor ever will be. How
is mamma?"

And Matty told him, and begged him to come and sleep
in her own little room, because the children would come
in in a rout at daybreak. But no! he would not hear to
that. "Whatever else is left, dear Matty, we have each
other. And we will not begin--on what will be a new
life to all of us--we will not begin by 'bating a jot of
the dear children's joys. Matty, that is what I have
been thinking of all the way as I walked home. But maybe
I should not have said it, but that Beverly said it just
now to me. Dear fellow! I cannot tell you the comfort
it was to me to see him come in! I told him he should
not have come, but he knew that he made me almost happy.
He is a fine fellow, Matty, and all night long he has
shown the temper and the sense of a man."

For a moment Matty could not say a word. Her eyes
were all running over with tears. She kissed her father
again, and then found out how to say, "I shall tell him
what you say, papa, and there will be two happy children
in this house, after all."

So she ran to Beverly's room, found him before he was
undressed, and told him. And the boy who was just
becoming a man, and the girl who, without knowing it, had
become a woman, kissed each other; held each other for a
minute, each by both hands, looked each other so lovingly
in the eyes, comforted each other by the infinite comfort
of love, and then said good-night and were asleep. Tom
had stolen to bed without waking his mother or his
sister, some hours before.

Yes! They all slept. The little ones slept, though
they had been so certain that they should not sleep one
wink from anxiety. This poor jaded man slept
because he must sleep. His poor wife slept because she
had not slept now for two nights before. And Matty and
Tom and Beverly slept because they were young and brave
and certain and pure, and because they were between
seventeen and twenty-two years of age. This is all to
say that they could seek God's help and find it. This is
to say that they were well-nigh omnipotent over earthly
ills,--so far, at the least, that sleep came when sleep
was needed.

But not after seven o'clock! Venty and Diana had
been retained by Flossy and Laura to call them at five
minutes of seven, and Laura and Flossy had called the
others. And at seven o'clock, precisely, a bugle-horn
sounded in the children's quarters, and then four
grotesque riders, each with a soldier hat made of
newspaper, each with a bright sash girt round a dressing-
gown, each with bare feet stuck into stout shoes, came
storming down the stairs, and as soon as the lower floor
was reached, each mounted on a hobby-horse or stick, and
with riot not to be told came knocking at Matty's door,
at Beverly's, and at Tom's. And these all appeared, also
with paper soldier hats upon their heads, and girt in
some very spontaneous costume, and so the whole troop
proceeded with loud fanfaron and drumbeat to mamma's door
and knocked for admission, and heard her cheery "Come
in." And papa and mamma had heard the bugle-calls, and
had wrapped some sort of shawls around their
shoulders, and were sitting up in bed, they also with
paper soldier hats upon them; and one scream of "Merry
Christmas" resounded as the doors flew open,--and then a
wild rampage of kissing and of hugging as the little ones
rushed for the best places they could find on the bed--
not to say in it. This was the Christmas custom.

And Tom rolled up a lounge on one side of the bed,
which after a fashion widened it, and Beverly brought up
his mother's easy-chair, which had earned the name of
"Moses' seat," on the other side, and thus, in a minute,
the great broad bed was peopled with the whole family, as
jolly, if as absurd, a sight as the rising sun looked
upon. And then! Flossy and Beverly were deputed to go
to the fender, and to bring the crowded, stiff stockings,
whose crackle was so delicate and exquisite; and so,
youngest by youngest, they brought forth their treasures,
not indeed gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but what
answered the immediate purposes better, barley cats,
dogs, elephants and locomotives, figs, raisins, walnuts,
and pecans.

Yes, and for one noisy half-hour not one person
thought of the cloud which hung over the house only the
night before!

But such happy forgetfulness cannot last forever.
There was the Christmas breakfast. And Tom tried to tell
of Academy times, and Beverly tried to tell stories
of the University. But it was a hard pull. The lines
under papa's eyes were only too dark. And all of a
sudden he would start, and ask some question which showed
that he did not know what they were talking of. Matty
had taken care to have the newspapers out of the way; but
everybody knew why they were out of the way,--and perhaps
this made things worse. Poor blundering Laura must needs
say, "That is the good of Christmas, that there are no
horrid newspapers for people to bother with," when
everybody above Horace's age knew that there were papers
somewhere, and soon Horace was bright enough to see what
he had not been told in words,--that something was going
wrong.

And as soon as breakfast was done, Flossy cried out,
"And now papa will tell us the story of the bear! Papa
always tells us that on Christmas morning. Laura, you
shall come; and, Horace, you shall sit there." And then
her poor papa had to take her up and kiss her, and say
that this morning he could not stop to tell stories, that
he had to go to the Department. And then Flossy and
Laura fairly cried. It was too bad. They hated the
Department. There never could be any fun but what that
horrid old Department came in. And when Horace found
that Tom was going to the Department too, and that Bev
meant to go with him, he was mad, and said he did not see
what was the use of having Christmas. Here he had tin-
foil and plaster upstairs, and little Watrous had
lent him a set of government medals, and they should have
such a real good time if Bev would only stay. He wished
the Department was at the bottom of the Potomac. Matty
fairly had to take the scolding boy out of the room.

Mr. Molyneux, poor fellow, undertook the soothing of
Flossy. "Anyway, old girl, you shall meet me as you go
to church, and we will go through the avenue together,
and I will show you the new Topsy girl selling cigars at
Pierre's tobacco shop. She is as big as Flossy. She has
not got quite such golden hair, but she never says one
word to her papa, because she is never cross to him."

"That's because he is never kind to her," said the
quick child, speaking wiser than she knew.

For Matty, she got a word with Tom, and he too
promised that they would be away from the Department in
time to meet the home party, and that all of them should
go to church together.

CHAPTER III

CHURCH AND SERMON

And, accordingly, as Mrs. Molyneux with her little troop
crossed F Street, they met the gentlemen all coming
toward them. They broke up into groups, and Tom and
Matty got their first real chance for talk since they had
parted the night before. No! Tom had found no clue
at the Navy Department. And although Eben Ricketts had
been good as gold, and had stayed and worked with Tom
till long after midnight, Eben had only worked to show
good-will, for Eben had not the least faith that there
was any clue there. Eben had said that if old Mr.
Whilthaugh, who knew the archive rooms through and
through, had not been turned out, they could do in
fifteen minutes what had cost them six hours, and that
old Mr. Whilthaugh, without looking, could tell whether
it was worth while to look. But old Mr. Whilthaugh had
been turned out, and Eben, even, did not know precisely
what had become of him. He thought he had gone back into
Pennsylvania, where his wife came from, but he did not
know.

"But, Matty, if nothing turns up to-day, I go to
Pennsylvania to-morrow to find this old Mr. Whilthaugh.
For I shall die if I stay here; and all the Eben
Rickettses in the world will never persuade me that the
vouchers are not in that archive-room. If the Navy did
the work, the Navy must have the vouchers."

Then Matty ventured to ask what she and her mother
had wondered about once and again,--why these particular
bits of paper were so necessary. Surely other vouchers,
or certified copies, or books of account could be found
somewhere!

"Yes! I know; you would say so. And if it were all
yesterday, and was all in these lazy times of peace,
you would say true. But you see, in the first place,
this is ever so long ago. Then, in the second place, it
was in the heat of war, when everything was on a gigantic
scale, and things had to be done in unheard-of ways.
Then, chiefly, this particular business involved the
buying up of I do not know who among the Rebels there in
Texas, and among their allies on the other side the Rio
Grande. This old Spaniard, whom mamma remembers, and
whom I just remember, he was the chief captain among the
turncoats, and there were two or three others, F. F. men
in their places,--"First Family men," that means, you
know; but after they did this work they did not stay in
their places long. No! papa says he was mighty careful;
that he had three of the scoundrels sworn before
notaries, or rather before one notary, and had their
receipts and acknowledgments stamped with his notary's
seal. Still, it did not do to have a word said in public
then. And after everything succeeded so perfectly, after
the troops landed without a shot, and found all the base
ready for them, corn and pork just where they wanted
it,--why, then everybody was too gratified to think of
imagining, as they do now, that papa had stolen that
money that bought the pork and the corn."

"I wish they were only half as grateful now," he
said, after a pause.

"Tom," said Matty, eagerly, "who was that notary?"

"I thought of that, too," said Tom. "There is no
doubt who it was. It was old Gilbert; you must remember
his sign, just below Faulkner's on the avenue. But in
the first place, Gilbert died just after our taking
Richmond. In the second place, he never knew what the
papers were--and he executed twenty such sets of papers
every day, very likely. All he could say, at the very
best, would be that at such a time father brought in an
old Spaniard and two or three other greasers, and that he
took their acknowledgments of something."

"I do not know that, Tom," said the girl, without
flinching at his mannish information. "If notaries in
Washington are anything like notaries in novels, that man
kept a record or register of his work. If he was not
very unlike everybody else who lives and works here, he
left a very destitute widow when he died. Tom, I shall
go after church and hunt up the Widow Gilbert. I shall
ask her for her husband's books, and shall tell her why
I want them."

The girl dropped her voice and said: "Tom, I shall
ask her IN HIS NAME."

"God grant it does any good, dear girl," said he.
"Far be it from me to say that you shall not try--"

But here he stopped speaking, for he felt Matty's arm
shake in his, and her whole frame trembled. Tom had only
to keep his eyes before him to see why.

Mr. Greenhithe, Matty's old admirer, the clerk who
had been dismissed for stealing, was just entering the
church, and even touched his hat to her as she went by.

Tom resisted his temptation to thrash him then and
there. He said,--

"Matty, I believe I will tackle that man!"

"Oh, Tom!"

"Yes, Matty, I can keep my temper, and he cannot keep
his. He has one advantage over most knaves, that he is
not only a knave of the first water, but he is sometimes
a fool, too. If it were only decent and right to take
him into Downing's saloon, and give him just one more
glass of whiskey than the blackguard would care to pay
for, I could get at his whole story."

"But, Tom, I thought you were so sure the Navy had
the papers!"

"Well! well!" said Tom, a little annoyed, as eager
people are when other eager people remember their words
against them. "I was sure--I was wholly sure--till I
left Eben Ricketts. But after that--well, of course, we
ought to pull every string."

"Tom!" This with a terrible gulp.

"Tom, you don't think I ought to speak with him!"

"Matty!"

"Why, Tom, yes; if he does know--if he is holding
this up in terror, Tom, I could make him do what I chose
once, Tom. You don't think I ought to try?"

"Matty, if you ever speak to that snake again, I will
thrash him within an inch of his life, and I will never
say a word to you as long as you live."

"That's my dear Tom!" And, hidden as they were, and
crying as she was under her veil, she flung her arms
around him and kissed him.

"All the same," said Tom, after he had kissed her
again and again,--"all the same, I shall find out, after
church, where the snake is staying. I shall go to the
hotel and take a cigar. I shall offer him one, and he is
so mean and stingy that he will take it. Perhaps this
may be one of his fool days. Perhaps somebody else will
treat him to the whiskey. No, Matty! honor bright, _I_
will not, though that ten cents might give us all a Merry
Christmas. Honor bright, I will not treat. But I am not
a saint, Matty! If anybody else treats, I must not be
expected to be far away."

Then he wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief and
led her in to the service. Their own pew was already
full. He had to take her back into Dr. Metcalf's pew.

So Matty was spared one annoyance which was prepared
for her.

Directly in front of her father's pew, sitting in the
most conspicuous seat on the other side of the aisle, was
the hateful Mr. Greenhithe.

Had he put himself there to watch Matty's face?

If he did, he was disappointed. If he had
persuaded himself he was to see a pale cheek or
tearful eyes, or that he was going to compel her to drop
her veil, he had reckoned quite without his host.
Whenever he did look that way, all he saw was the face of
Master Horace. Horace was engaged in counting the large
tassels on his side of the pulpit curtains; in counting,
also, the number of small tassels between them, and from
the data thus obtained, in calculating how many tassels
there must be on all the curtains to the pulpit, and how
many on the curtains behind the rail to the chancel. Mr.
Greenhithe, therefore, had but little comfort in studying
Horace's face.

Just as the Creed was finished, when the rest of the
church was still, the sexton led up the aisle a grim-
looking man, with a shaggy coat and a very dirty face,
and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew--
as if he would fain bring him in. Mr. Molyneux was at
the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from
the aisle, and the sexton actually touched him. He
turned round and looked at the stranger,--evidently did
not know him,--but with the instinct of hospitality,
stepped into the aisle and offered him his seat. The
stranger was embarrassed; hesitated as if he would speak,
then shook his head in refusal of the attention, and
crossing the aisle, took a seat offered him there, in
full sight of Mr. Molyneux, and, indeed, of Matty.

Poor girl! The trifle--of course it was a trifle--
upset her sadly.

Was the man a marshal or a sheriff? Would they
really arrest her father on Christmas Day, in church?

CHAPTER IV

IS THIS CHRISTMAS?

Yes; it was, as you have said, a very curious Christmas
service for all those people.

What Horace turned his mind to, at intervals, has
been told.

Of the elder members of our little company who sat
there near the head of the side aisle, it may be said, in
general, that they did their best to keep their hearts
and minds engaged in the service, and that sometimes they
succeeded. They succeeded better while they could really
join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it
came to the sermon. Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of
those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so
inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the
text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and
look." And so it happened--it was what did not often
happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often,
at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading
paragraph of the sermon. Now this duty of searching and
looking had been just what all the elder members of
the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his
way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty-
eight hours. To get such relief as they might from it,
they had come to church, to look rather higher if they
could. So that it was to them more a misfortune than a
matter of immediate spiritual relief that their dear old
friend, who loved each one of them with an intimate and
peculiar love, happened to enlarge on his text just as he
did.

If poor Mr. Molyneux, by dint of severe self-command,
had succeeded in abstracting his thoughts from disgrace
almost certain,--from thinking over, in horrible variety,
the several threads of inquiry and answer by which that
disgrace was to be avoided or precipitated,--how was it
possible to maintain such abstraction, while the worthy
preacher, wholly unconscious of the blood he drew with
every word, ground out his sentences in such words as
these:--

"Search and look, my brethren. Time passes faster
than we think. Our gray hairs gather apace above our
foreheads. And the treasure which we prized beyond price
in years bygone has perhaps, amid the cares of this
world, or in the deceitfulness of riches, been thrust on
one side, neglected, at last forgotten. How is it with
you, dear friends? Are you the man? Are you the woman?
Have you put on one side the very treasure of your
life,--as some careless housewife might lay aside on
a forgotten shelf this parcel or that, once so precious
to her? Dear friends, as the year draws to a close,
awaken from such neglect! Brush away the dust from these
forgotten caskets! Lift them from their hiding-places
and set them forth, even in your Christmas festivities.
Search and look!"

Poor Mrs. Molyneux had never wished before so
earnestly that a sermon might be done. She dared not
look round to see her husband for a while, but after one
of these invocations--not quite so terrible as the rest,
perhaps--she stole a glance that way, to find--that she
might have spared her anxiety. Two nights of "searching
and looking" had done their duty by the poor man, and
though his head was firm braced against the column which
rose from the side of their pew, his eyes were closed,
and his wife was relieved by the certainty that he was
listening, as those happy members of the human family
listen who assure me that they hear when their lids are
tight pressed over their eyeballs. As for Beverly, he
was assuming the resolute aspect of a sailor under fire,
and was imagining himself taking the whole storm of Fort
Constantine as he led an American squadron into the Bay
of Sevastopol. Tom did not know what the preacher said,
but was devising the method of his interview with
Greenhithe. Matty did know. Dear girl! she knew very
well. And with every well-rounded sentence of the sermon
she was more determined as to the method of her
appeal to Mrs. Gilbert, the widow of the notary. She
would search and look there.

Yes! and it was well for every one of them that they
went to that service. The sermon at the worst was but
twenty minutes. "Twenty minutes in length," said
Beverly, wickedly, "and no depth at all." But that was
not true nor fair; nor was that, either way, the thing
that was essential. By the time they had all sung

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,"

even before the good old Doctor had asked for Heaven's
blessing upon them, it had come. To Mr. Molyneux it
had come in an hour's rest of mind, body, and soul. To
Matty it had come in an hour's calm determination. To
Mrs. Molyneux it had come in the certainty that there
is One Eye which sees through all hiding-places and
behind all disguises. To the children it had come,
because the hour had called up to them a hundred memories
of Galilee and Nazareth, of Mary Mother, and of children
made happy, to supplement and help out their legends of
Santa Claus. Yes, and even Beverly the brave, and Tom
the outraged, as they stood to receive the benediction of
the preacher, were more of men and less of firebrands
than they were. They all stood with reverence; they
paused a moment, and then slowly walked down the aisle.

"Where is your father, Horace?" said Mrs. Molyneux,
a little anxiously, as she came where she could
speak aloud. Horace was waiting for her.

"Papa? He went away with the gentleman who came in
after service began; they crossed the street and took a
carriage together."

"And did papa leave no message?"

"Why, no; he did not turn round. The strange man--
the man in the rough coat--just touched him and spoke to
him half-way down the aisle. Then papa whispered to him
and he whispered back. Then, as soon as they came into
the vestibule here, papa led him out at that side door,
and did not seem to remember me. They almost ran across
the street, and took George Gibb's hack. I knew the
horses."

"That's too bad," said Laura; "I thought papa would
walk home with us and tell us the story of the bears."

Poor Mrs. Molyneux thought it was too bad, too; but
she said nothing.

And Matty, when she joined her mother, said,--

"I shall feel a thousand times happier, mamma, if I
go and see Mrs. Gilbert now." And she explained who Mrs.
Gilbert was. "Perhaps it may do some good. Anyway, I
shall feel as if I were doing something. I will be home
in time to finish the tree and things, for Horace will
like to help me."

And the poor girl looked her entreaties so eagerly
that her mother could not but assent to her plan.
So she made Beverly go up the avenue with her,--Beverly,
who would have swum the Potomac and back for her, had she
asked him,--as he was on his way to join his father at
the Bureau.

As they came out upon the broad sidewalk, that odious
Greenhithe, with some one whom Beverly called a
blackguard of his crew, pushed by them, and he had the
impudence to turn and touch his hat to Matty again.

Matty's hand trembled on Beverly's arm, but she would
not speak for a minute, only she walked slower and
slower.

Then she said: "I am so afraid, Bev, that Tom and he
will get into a quarrel. Tom declares he will go into
Willard's and find out whether he does know anything."

But Beverly, very mannish, tried to reassure her and
make her believe that Tom would be very self-restrained
and perfectly careful.

On Christmas Day the Jew's dry-goods store, which had
taken the place of old Mr. Gilbert's notary's office, was
closed--not perhaps so much from the Israelite's
enthusiasm about Christmas as in deference to what in New
England is called "the sense of the street." Matty,
however, acting from a precise knowledge of Washington
life, rang boldly at the green door adjacent, Beverly
still waiting to see what might turn up; and when a brisk
"colored girl" appeared, Matty inquired if Mrs. Munroe
was at home.

Now all that Matty knew of Mrs. Munroe was that her
name was on a well-scoured brass plate on the door.

Mrs. Munroe was in. Beverly said he would wait in
the passage. Mrs. Munroe proved to be a nice, motherly
sort of a person, who, as it need hardly be said, was
stone-deaf. It required some time for Matty to adjust
her speaking apparatus to the exigency, but when this was
done, Mrs. Munroe explained that Mr. Gilbert was dead,--
that an effort had been made to continue the business
with the old sign and the old good will, under the
direction of a certain Mr. Bundy, who had sometimes been
called in as an assistant. But Mr. Bundy, after some
years, paid more attention to whiskey than he did to
notarying, and the law business had suffered. Finally,
Mr. Bundy was brought home by the police one night with
a broken head, and then Mrs. Gilbert had withdrawn the
signs, cancelled the lease, turned Mr. Bundy out-of-
doors, and retired to live with a step-sister of her
brother's wife's father near the Arsenal; good Mrs.
Munroe was not certain whether on Delaware Avenue, or
whether on T Street, U Street, or V Street. And, indeed,
whether the lady's name were Butman before she married
her second husband, and Lichtenfels afterward--or whether
his name were Butman and hers Lichtenfels, Mrs. Munroe
was not quite sure. Nor could she say whether Mr.
Gilbert took the account books and registers --there
were heaps on heaps of them, for Mr. Gilbert had been a
notary ever since General Jackson's day--or whether Bundy
did not take them, or whether they were not sold for old
paper, Mrs. Munroe was not sure. For all this happened--
all the break-up and removal--while Mrs. Munroe was on a
visit to her sister not far from Brick Church above
Little Falls, on your way to Frederic. And Mrs. Munroe
offered this visit as a constant apology for her not
knowing more precisely every detail of her old friend's
business.

This explanation took a good deal of time, through
all of which poor Beverly was fretting and fuming and
stamping his cold feet in the passage, hearing the
occasional questions of his sister, uttered with thunder
tone in the "setting-room" above, but hearing no word of
the placid widow's replies.

When Matty returned and held a consultation with him,
the question was, whether to follow the books of account
to Georgetown, where Mr. Bundy was understood to be still
residing, or to the neighborhood of the Arsenal, in the
hope of finding Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Lichtenfels, or Mrs.
Butman, as the case might be. Readers should understand
that these two points, both unknown to the young people,
are some six miles asunder, the original notary's office
being about half-way between them. Beverly was more
disposed to advise following the man. He was of a mind
to attack some one of his own sex. But the
enterprise was, in truth, Matty's enterprise. Beverly
had but little faith in it from the beginning, and Matty
was minded to follow such clue as they had to Mrs.
Gilbert, quite sure that, woman with woman, she should
succeed better with her than, man with man, Beverly with
Bundy. Beverly assented to this view the more willingly,
because Matty was quite willing to undertake the quest
alone. She was very brave about it indeed. "Plenty of
nice people at the Arsenal," or near it, whom she could
fall back upon for counsel or information. So they
parted. Matty took a street car for the east and south,
and Beverly went his ways to the Bureau of Internal
Improvement to report for duty to his father.

This story must not follow the details of Matty's
quest for the firm of "Gilbert, Lichtenfels, or Butman."
Certain it is that she would never have succeeded had she
rested simply on the directory or on such crude
information as Mrs. Munroe had so freely given. But
Matty had an English tongue in her head,--a courteous,
which is to say a confiding, address with strangers; she
seemed almost to be conferring a favor at the moment when
she asked one, and she knew, in this business, that there
was no such word as fail. After one or two false
starts--some very stupid answers, and some very blunt
refusals--she found her quarry at last, by as simple a
process as walking into a Sunday-school of colored
children, where she heard singing in the basement of
a little chapel.

In a few words Matty explained her errand to the
Superintendent, and that it was necessary that she should
find Mrs. Gilbert before dark.

"Ting!" one stroke of the bell called hundreds of
eager voices to silence.

"Who knows where Mrs. Gilbert lives? Is it at Mrs.
Butman's house or Mrs. Lichtenfels'?"

Twenty eager hands contended with each other for the
honor of giving the information, and in three minutes
more, Matty, all encouraged by her success, was on her
way.

And Mrs. Gilbert was at home. Good fortune number
two! Matty's star was surely in the ascendant! Matty
sent in her card, and the nice old lady presented herself
at once, remembered who Matty was, remembered how much
business Mr. Molyneux used to bring to the office, and
how grateful Mr. Gilbert always was. She was so glad to
see Matty, and she hoped Mr. Molyneux was well, and Mrs.
Molyneux and all those little ones! She used to see them
every Sunday as they went to church, if they went on the
avenue.

Thus encouraged, Matty opened on her sad story, and
was fairly helped from stage to stage by the wonder,
indignation, and exclamations of the kind old lady. When
Matty came to the end, and made her understand how much
depended on the day-book, register, and ledger of her
husband, it was a fair minute before she spoke.

"We will see, my dear, we will see. I wish it may be
so, but I 'm all afeard. It would not be like him, my
dear. It would not be like any of them. But come with
me, my dear, we will see--we will see."

Then, as Matty followed her, through devious ways,
out through the kitchen, across a queer bricked yard,
into a half stable, half woodshed, which the good woman
unlocked, she went on talking:--

"You see, my dear child, that though notaries are
called notaries, as if it were their business to give
notice, the most important part of their business is
keeping secrets. Now, when a man's note goes to protest,
the notary tells him what has happened, which he knew
very well before; and then he comes to the notary and
begs him not to tell anybody else, and of course he does
not. And the business of a notary's account books, as my
husband used to say, is to tell just enough, and not to
tell any more.

"Why, my dear child, he would not use blotting-paper
in the office,--he would always use sand. `Blotting-
paper! Never!' he would say; 'Blotting-paper tells
secrets!'"

With such chatter they came to the little chilly
room, which was shelved all around, and to Matty's glad
eyes presented rows of green and blue and blue and red
boxes,--and folio and quarto books of every date, from
1829 to 1869, forty years in which the late Mr. Gilbert
had been confirming history, keeping secret what he
knew, but making sure what, but for him, might have been
doubted by a sceptic world.

Things were in good order. Mrs. Gilbert was proud to
show that they were in good order. The day-book for 1863
was at hand. Matty knew the fatal dates only too well.
And the fatal entries were here!

How her heart beat as she began to read!

Cr.
To Thomas Molyneux Esq., (B. I. I.) official
authentication of signature of Felipe Gazza . . . $1.25
Same, authentication of signature of Jose B. Du
Camara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25
Same, authentication of signature of Jacob H.
Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25

And this was all! Poor Matty copied it all, but all the
time she begged Mrs. Gilbert to tell her if there was not
some note-book or journal that would tell more. And kind
Mrs. Gilbert looked eagerly for what she called the
"Diry." At the proper dates on the cash-book, at
intervals of a week or two, Matty found similar entries--
the names of the two Spaniards appearing in all these--
but other names in place of Cole's just as Tom had told
her already. By the time she had copied all of these,
Mrs. Gilbert had found the "Diry." Eager, and yet heart-
sick, Matty turned it over with her old friend.

This was all:--

"Mr. Molyneux here. Very private. Papers in R. G. E."
And then followed a little burst of unintelligible
short-hand.

Poor Matty! She could not but feel that here would
not be evidence good for anything, even in a novel. But
she copied every word carefully, as a chief clerk's
daughter should do. She thanked the kind old lady, and
even kissed her. She looked at her watch. Heavens! how
fast time had gone! and the afternoons were so short!

"Yes, my dear Miss Molyneux; but they have turned, my
dear, the day is a little longer and a little lighter."

Did the old lady mean it for an omen, or was it only
one of those chattering remarks on meteors and weather
change of which old age is so fond? Matty wondered, but
did not know. Fast as she could, she tripped bravely on
to the avenue for her street car.

"The day is longer and lighter."

Meanwhile Tom was following his clue in the public
rooms at Willard's, to which, as he prophesied, Mr.
Greenhithe had returned after the unusual variation in
his life of a morning spent in the sanctuary. Tom bought
a copy of the Baltimore "The Sun," and went into one of
the larger rooms resorted to by travellers and loafers,
and sat down. But Mr. Greenhithe did not appear there.
Tom walked up and down through the passages a little
uneasily, for he was sure the ex-clerk had come into the
hotel. He went up and looked in at the ladies'
sitting-rooms, to see if perhaps some Duchess of
Devonshire, of high political circles, had found it worth
while to drag Mr. Greenhithe up there by a single hair.
No Mr. Greenhithe! Tom was forced to go down and drink
a glass of beer to see if Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty.
But at that moment, though Mr. Greenhithe was generally
thirsty in the middle of the day, and although many men
were thirsty at the time Tom hung over his glass of
lager, Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty there. It was only
as Tom passed the billiard-room that he saw Mr.
Greenhithe was playing a game of billiards, by way of
celebrating the new birth of a regenerated world.

What to do now! Tom could not, in common decency, go
in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke.
Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the
Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about. Tom
slowly withdrew.

As he withdrew, whom should be meet but one of his
kindest friends, Commodore Benbow? When the boys made
their "experimental cruise" the year before, they had
found Commodore Benbow's ship at Lisbon. The Commodore
had taken a particular fancy to Tom, because he had known
his mother when they were boy and girl. Tom had even
been invited personally to the flag-ship, and was to have
been presented at Court, but that they sailed too soon.

To tell the whole truth, the Commodore was not
overpleased to see his protege hanging about the bar
and billiard-room on Christmas Day. For himself, his
whole family were living at Willard's, but he knew Tom's
father was not living there, and he thought Tom might be
better employed.

Perhaps Tom guessed this. Perhaps he was in despair.
Anyway he knew "Old Benbow," as the boys called him,
would be a good counsellor. In point of statistics "Old
Benbow" was just turned forty, had not a gray hair in his
head, could have beaten any one of Tom's class, whether
in gunning or at billiards, could have demonstrated every
problem in Euclid while they were fiddling over the
forty-seventh proposition. He was at the very prime of
well-preserved power, but young nineteen called him "Old
Benbow," as young nineteen will, in such cases.

Bold with despair, or with love for his father, Tom
stopped "Old Benbow" and asked him if he would come into
one of the sitting-rooms with him. Then he made this
venerable man his confidant. The Commodore had seen the
slurs in the "Scorpion" and the "Argus" and the "Evening
Journal." "A pity," said he, "that Newspaper Row, that
can do so much good, should do so much harm. What is
Newspaper Row? Three or four men of honor, three or four
dreamers, three or four schoolboys, three or four fools,
and three or four scamps. And the public, Molyneux,--
which is to say you and I,--accept the trumpet blast
of one of these heralds precisely as we do that of
another. Practically," said he, pensively, "when we were
detached to serve with the 33d Corps in Mobile Bay, I
found I liked the talk of those light-infantry men who
had been in every scrimmage of the war, quite as much as
I did that of the bandmen who played the trumpets on
parade. But this is neither here nor there. I thought
of coming round to see your father, but I knew I should
bother him. What can I do, my boy?"

Then Tom told him, rather doubtfully, that he had
reason to fear that Mr. Greenhithe was at the bottom of
the whole scandal. He said he wished he did not think
that Mr. Greenhithe had himself stolen the papers. "If
I am wrong, I want to know it," said he; "if I am right,
I want to know it. I do not want to be doing any man
injustice. But I do not want to keep old Eben Ricketts
down at the department hunting for a file of papers which
Greenhithe has hidden in his trunk or put into the fire."

"No!--no!--no, indeed," said "old Benbow," musing.
"No!--No!--No!--"

Then after a pause, "Tom," said he, "come round here
in an hour. I know that young fellow your friend is
playing with, and I wish he were in better company than
he is. I think I know enough of the usages of modern
society to `interview' him and his companion, though
times have changed since I was of your age in that
regard. Come here in an hour, or give me rather more,
come here at half-past two, and we will see what we
will see."

So Tom went round to the Navy Department, and here he
found the faithful Eben--faithful to him, though utterly
faithless as to any success in the special quest which
was making the entertainment of the Christmas holiday.
Vainly did Tom repeat to him his formula,--

"If the Navy did the work, the Navy has the vouchers."

"My dear boy," Eben Ricketts repeated a hundred
times, "though the Navy did the work, the Navy did not
provide the pork and beans; it did not arrange in advance
for the landing, least of all did it buy the greasers.
I will look where you like, for love of your father and
you; but that file of vouchers is not here, never was
here, and never will be found here."

An assistant like this is not an encouraging
companion or adviser.

And, in short, the vouchers were not found in the
Navy Department, in that particular midday search. At
twenty-five minutes past two Tom gave it up unwillingly,
bade Eben Ricketts good-by, washed from his hands the
accretions of coal-dust, which will gather even on
letter-boxes in Navy Departments, and ran across in front
of the President's House, to Willard's. He looked up at
the White House, and wondered how the people there were
spending their Christmas Day.

Commodore Benbow was waiting for him. He took him up
into his own parlor.

"Molyneux, your Mr. Greenhithe is either the most
ingenious liar and the best actor on God's earth, or he
knows no more of your lost papers than a child in heaven.

"I went back to the billiard-room, after you left me.
I walked up to Millet--that was Lieutenant Millet playing
with Greenhithe--and I shook hands. He had to introduce
me to your friend. Then I asked them both to come here,
told Millet I had some papers from Montevideo that he
would be glad to see, and that I should be glad of a call
when they had done their game. Well, they came. I am
sorry to say your friend--"

"Oh, don't, my dear Commodore Benbow, don't call him
my friend, even in a joke; it makes me feel awfully."

"I am glad it does," said the Commodore, laughing.
"Well, I am very sorry to say that the black sheep had
been drinking more of the whisky downstairs than was good
for him; and, no fault of mine, he drank more of my
Madeira than he should have done, and, Tom, I do not
believe he was in any condition to keep secrets. Well,
first of all, it appeared that he had been in Bremen and
Vienna for six months. He only arrived in New York
yesterday morning."

Tom's face fell.

"And, next--you may take this for what it is worth--
but I believe he spoke the truth for once; he
certainly did if there is any truth in liquor or in
swearing. For when I asked Millet what all this stuff
about your father meant, Greenhithe interrupted, very
unnecessarily and very rudely, and said, with more oaths
than I will trouble you with, that the whole was a damned
lie of the newspaper men; that they had lied about him
(Greenhithe) and now were lying about old Molyneux; that
Molyneux had been very hard on him and very unjust to
him, but he would say that he was honest as the clock--
honest enough to be mean. And that he would say that to
the committee, if they would call on him, and so on and
so on."

"Much good would he do before the committee," said
poor Tom.

And thus ended Tom's branch of the investigation.
"Come to me, if I can help you, my boy," said Old Benbow.
"It is always the darkest, old fellow, the hour before
day."

Tom was astronomer enough to know that this old saw
was as false as most old saws. But with this for his
only comfort, he returned to the bureau to seek Beverly
and his father.

Neither Beverly nor his father was there! Tom went
directly home. His mother was eager to see him.

She had come home alone, and, save Horace and Laura
and Flossy and Brick, she had seen nobody but a messenger
from the bureau.

Brick was the family name for Robert, one of the
youngest of this household.

Of Beverly's movements the story must be more briefly
told. They took more time than Tom's; as much indeed as
his sister's, after they parted. But they were conducted
by means of that marvel of marvels, the telegraph,--the
chief of whose marvels is that it compels even a long-
winded generation like ours to speak in very short metre.

Beverly began with Mr. Bundy at Georgetown.
Georgetown is but a quiet place on the most active of
days. On Christmas Day Beverly found but little stirring
out of doors.

Still, with the directory, with the advice of a
saloon-keeper and the information of a police officer,
Beverly tracked Mr. Bundy to his lair.

It was not a notary's office, it was a liquor shop of
the lowest grade, with many badly painted signs, which
explained that this was "Our House," and that here Mr.
Bundy made and sold with proper license--let us be
grateful--Tom and Jerry, Smashes, Cocktails, and did
other "deeds without a name." On this occasion, however,
even the door of "Our House" was closed. Mr. Bundy had
gone to a turkey-shooting match at Fairfax Court House.
The period of his return was very doubtful. He had never
done anything but keep this drinking-room since old Mrs.
Gilbert turned him out of doors.

With this information Master Beverly returned to
town. He then began on his own line of search. Relying
on Tom's news, he went to the office of the Western
Union Telegraph and concocted this despatch, which he
thought a masterpiece.

GREENSBURG, Westmoreland Co., Pa.

TO ROBERT JOHN WHILTHAUGH:

When and where can I see you on important business?
Answer.

BEVERLY MOLYNEUX, for THOMAS MOLYNEUX.

Then he took a walk, and after half an hour called at
the office again. The office was still engaged in
calling Greensburg. Greensburg was eating its Christmas
dinner. But at last Greensburg was called. Then Beverly
received this answer:--

Whilthaugh has been dead more than a year.
GREENSBURG.

To which Beverly replied:--

Where does his wife live, or his administrator?

To which Greensburg, having been called a second time
with difficulty, replied:--

His wife is crazy, and we never heard of any property.
GREENSBURG.

With this result of his investment as a non-dividend
member of the great Western Union Mutual Information
Club, Beverly returned home, chewing the cud of sweet and
bitter fancies.

"There is no speech nor language," sang the choir in
St. Matthews as he passed, "where their voice is not
heard. Their line is gone out through all the
earth--" And Tom heard no more, as he passed on.

As he walked, almost unwillingly, up the street to
the high steps of his father's house, Matty, out of
breath, overtook him.

"What have you found, Bev?"

"Nothing," said the boy, moodily. And poor Matty had
to confess that she had hardly more to tell.

They came into the house by the lower entrance, that
they need not attract their mother's attention. But she
was on the alert. Even Horace and the younger children
knew by this time that something was wrong.

Horace's story about the strange man and papa was the
last news of papa. Papa had not been at the bureau. The
bureau people waited for him till two, and he did not
come. Then Stratton had come round to see if he was to
keep open any longer. Stratton had told Mrs. Molyneux
that her husband had not been there since church.

Where in the world was he?

Poor Mrs. Molyneux had not known where to send or to
go. She had just looked in at the Doctor's, but he was
not there.

Tom had appeared first to her tedious waiting. Tom
would not tell her, but he even went and looked in on
Newspaper Row, which he had been abusing so. For Tom's
first thought was that a formal information had been
lodged somewhere, and that his father was arrested.

But Newspaper Row evidently was unsuspicious of any
arrest.

Tom even walked down to the old jail, and made an
absurd errand to see the Deputy-Marshal. But the Deputy-
Marshal was at his Christmas dinner.

Tom told all this in the hall to Beverly and to
Matty.

Everything had failed, and papa was gone. Who could
the man in the shaggy coat be?

The three went together into the parlor.

For a little, Matty and Horace and Tom and Beverly
then made a pretence of arranging the tree. But, in
truth, Mrs. Molyneux, in the midst of all her care, had
done that, while they were all away.

Dinner was postponed half an hour, and they gathered,
all in the darkness, looking at the sickliest blaze that
ever rambled over half-burned Cumberland coal.

The Brick came climbing up on Tom's knees and bade
him tell a story; but even Laura saw that something was
wrong, and hushed the child, and said she and Flossy
would sing one of their carols. And they sang it, and
were praised; and they sang another, and were praised.
But then it was quite dark, and nobody had any heart to
say one word.

"Where is papa?" said the Brick.

"Where indeed?" everybody wanted to say, and no one
did.

But then the door-bell rang, and Chloe brought in a
note.

"He's waiting for an answer, mum."

And Tom lighted the gas. It popped up so bright that
little Flossy said,--

"The people that sat in darkness saw a great light--"

This was just as Mrs. Molyneux tore open the note.
For the instant she could not speak. She handed it to
the three.

"FOUND
"Home in half an hour!
"All right! thank God!
T. M."

"Saw a great light, indeed!" said Horace, who, for
once, felt awed.

CHAPTER V

THIS IS CHRISTMAS

For half a minute, as it seemed afterwards, no one
spoke. Then Matty flew to her mother, and flung her
arms around her neck, and kissed her again and again.

Tom hardly knew what he was doing; but he recovered
self-command enough to know that he must try to be manly
and businesslike,--and so he rushed downstairs to find
the man who brought the note. It proved to be a man he
did not know. Not a messenger from the bureau, not one
from the Navy Department, least of all, an aid of
the Assistant Marshal's. He was an innocent waiter from
the Seaton House, who said a gentleman called him and
gave him the note, told him to lose no time, and gave him
half a dollar for coming. He had asked for an answer,
though the gentleman had not told him to do so.

Tom wrote: "Hurrah! All's well! All at home.--T."
and gave this note to the man.

They all talked at once, and then they sat still
without talking. The children--must it be confessed?--
asked all sorts of inopportune questions. At last Tom
was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by
way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much
correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in
smelling at the almond-candy and the figs, when a
carriage was heard on the street, evidently coming
rapidly towards them. It stopped at the door. The bear
was forgotten, as all the elders in this free-and-easy
family rushed out of the parlor into the hall.

Papa was there, and was as happy as they. With papa,
or just behind him, came in the man with the rough coat,
whose face at church had been so dirty, whose face now
was clean. To think that papa should have brought the
Deputy-Marshal with him! For by the name of "the Deputy-
Marshal" had this mysterious stranger been spoken of in
private by the two young men since the fatal theory had
been advanced that he had come into the church to arrest
Mr. Molyneux.

The unknown, with great tact, managed to keep in the
background, while Mrs. Molyneux kissed her husband, and
while Matty kissed him, and while among them they pulled
off his coat. But Mr. Molyneux did not forget. He made
a chance in a moment for saying, "You must speak to our
friend who has brought me here; no one was ever so
welcome at a Christmas dinner. Mr. Kuypers, my dear, Mr.
Kuypers, Matty dear; these are my boys, Mr. Kuypers."

Then the ladies welcomed the stranger, and the boys
shook hands with him. Mr. Molyneux added, what hardly
any one understood: "It is not every friend that travels
two thousand miles to jog a friend's memory."

And they all huddled into the parlor. But in a
moment more, Mrs. Molyneux had invited Mr. Kuypers to go
upstairs to wash himself, and he, with good feeling,
which he showed all the evening, gladly took himself out
of the way, and so, as Tom returned from showing him to
his room, the parlor was filled with "those God made
there," as the little boy used to say, and with none
beside.

"Now tell us all about it, dear papa," cried Tom.

"I was trying to tell your mother. But there is not
much to tell. Poor Mr. Kuypers had travelled all the way
from Colorado, the minute he heard I was in trouble.
Yesterday he bought the `Scorpion' in the train, and
found the Committee was down on us. He drove here from
the station as soon as the train came in. He missed you
here, and drove by mistake to Trinity. That made
him late with us, and so, as the service had begun, he
waited till it was done."

"Well!" said Bev, perhaps a little impatiently.

"But so soon as we were going out he touched me, and
said he had come to find me, in the matter of the Rio
Grande vouchers. Do you know, Eliza, I can afford to
laugh at it now, but at the moment I thought he was a
deputy of the Sergeant-at-Arms?"

"There!" screamed Tom, "I said he was a deputy-marshal!"

"I said, `Certainly;' and I laughed, and said they
seemed to interest all my friends. Then he said, `Then
you have them? If I had known that, I would have spared
my journey.' This threw me off guard, and I said I
supposed I had them, but I could not find them. And he
said eagerly--this was just on the church steps--`But I
can.'

"Then he said he had a carriage waiting, and he bade
me jump in.

"So soon as we were in the carriage he explained,
what I ought to have remembered, but could not then
recollect for the life of me, that after General Trebou
returned from Texas, there was a Court of Inquiry, and
that there was some question about these very supplies,
the beans and the coffee particularly; they had nothing
to do with the landing nor with the Mexicans. And the
Court of Inquiry sent over one day from the War
Department, where they were sitting, to our office for an
account, because we were said to have it. Mr.
Kuypers was their messenger to us, and because we had
bound them all together, the whole file was sent as it
was. He took them, and as it happened, he looked them
over, and what was better, he remembered them. Where our
receipt is, Heaven knows!

"Well, that Court of Inquiry was endless, as those
army inquiries always are. Mr. Kuypers was in attendance
all the time. He says he never shall forget it, if other
people do.

"So, as soon as he saw that we were in trouble at the
bureau--that I was in trouble, I mean," said Mr.
Molyneux, stoutly, "he knew that he knew what nobody else
knew,--that the vouchers were in the papers of that Court
of Inquiry."

"And he came all the way to tell? What a good
fellow!"

"Yes, he came on purpose. He says he could not help
coming. He says he made two or three telegrams; but
every time he tried to telegraph, he felt as if he were
shirking. And I believe he was right. I believe we
should never have pulled through without him. `Personal
presence moves the world,' as Eli Thayer used to say."

"And you found them?" asked Mrs. Molyneux, faintly
essaying to get back to the story.

"Oh Yes, we found them; but not in one minute. You
see, first of all, I had to go to the chief clerk at the
War Department and get the department opened on a
holiday. Then we had no end of clerks to disturb at
their Christmas dinners, and at last we found a good
fellow named Breen who was willing to take hold with Mr.
Kuypers. And Mr. Kuypers himself," here he dropped his
voice, "why, we have not three men in all the departments
who know the history of this government or the system of
its records as he does.

"Once in the office, he went to work like a master.
Breen was amazed. Why! We found those documents in less
than half an hour!

"Then I sent Breen with a note to the Secretary. He
was good as gold; came down in his own carriage,
congratulated me as heartily--well almost as heartily as
you do, Tom--and took us both round, with the files, to
Mr. McDermot, the Chairman of the House Committee. He
was dining with his mess, at the Seaton House, but we
called him out, and I declare, I believe he was as much
pleased as we were.

"I only stopped to make him give me a receipt for the
papers, because they all said it was idle to take copies,
and here we are!"

On the hush that followed, the Brick made his way up
on his father's knee and said,--

"And now, papa, will you tell us the story of the
bear? Tom does not tell it very well."

They all laughed,--they could afford to laugh now;
and Mr. Molyneux was just beginning upon the story of the
bear, when Mr. Kuypers reappeared. He had in this short
time revised his toilet, and looked, Mr. Molyneux said in
an aside, like the angel of light that he was. "Bears!"
said he, "are there any bears in Washington? Why,
it was only last Monday that I killed a bear, and I ate
him on Tuesday."

"Did you eat him all?" asked the Brick, whose
reverence for Mr. Kuypers was much more increased by this
story than by any of the unintelligible conversation
which had gone before. But just as Mr. Kuypers began on
the story of the bear, Chloe appeared with beaming face,
and announced that dinner was ready.

That dinner, which this morning every one who had any
sense had so dreaded, and which now seemed a festival
indeed!

Well! there was great pretence in fun and form in
marshalling. And Mr. Kuypers gave his arm to Matty, and
Horace his to Laura, and Beverly his to Flossy, and Tom
brought up the rear with the Brick on his shoulders. And
Mr. Molyneux returned thanks and asked a blessing all
together. And then they fell to, on the turkey and on
the chicken pie. And they tried to talk about Colorado
and mining; about Gold Hill and Hale-and-Norcross, and
Uncle Sam and Overman and Yellow Jacket. But in spite of
them all, the talk would drift back to Bundy and his
various signs, "Our House" and Tom and Jerry; to the wife
of Mr. Whilthaugh; to Commodore Benbow; to old Mrs.
Gilbert and Delaware Avenue. And this was really quite
as much the fault of Mr. Kuypers as it was of any of the
Molyneux family. He seemed as much one of them as did
Tom himself. This anecdote of failure and that of
success kept cropping out. Walsingham's high-bred and
dignified enthusiasm for the triumph of the office, and
the satisfaction that Eben Ricketts would feel when he
was told that the Navy never had the vouchers,--all were
commented on. Then Mr. Molyneux would start and say, "We
are talking shop again. You say the autumn has been mild
in the mountains;" and then in two minutes they would be
on the trail of "Search and Look" again.

It was in one of these false starts that Mr. Kuypers
explained why he came, which in Horace's mind and perhaps
in the minds of the others had been the question most
puzzling of all.

"Why," said Horace, bluntly, "had you ever heard of
papa before!"

"Had I heard of him? " said Mr. Kuypers. "I think
so. Why, my dear boy, your father is my oldest and
kindest friend!" At this exclamation even Mrs. Molyneux
showed amazement. Tom laid down his fork and looked to
see if the man was crazy, and Mr. Molyneux himself was
thrown off his balance.

Mr. Kuypers was a well-bred man, but this time he
could not conceal his amazement. He laid down knife and
fork both, looked up and almost laughed, as he said with
wonder,--

"Don't you know who I am?"

"We know you are our good angel to-day," said Mrs.
Molyneux, bravely; "and that is enough to know."

"But don't you know why I am here, or what sent me?"

Mr. Molyneux said that he understood very well that
his friend wanted to see justice done, and that he had
preferred to see to this in person.

"I thought you looked queer," said Mr. Kuypers,
frankly; "but still, I did not know I was changed. Why,
don't you remember Bruce? You remember Mrs. Chappell,
surely."

"Are you Bruce?" cried Mr. Molyneux; and he fairly
left his chair and went round the table to the young man.
"Why, I can see it now. But then--why, you were a boy,
you know, and this black beard--"

"But pray explain, pray explain," cried Tom. "The
mysteries increase on us. Who is Mrs. Chappell, and, for
that matter, who is Bruce, if his real name be not
Kuypers?"

And they all laughed heartily. People got back their
self-possession a little, and Mr. Kuypers explained.

"I am Bruce Kuypers," said he, "though your father
does not seem to remember the Kuypers part."

"No," said Mr. Molyneux, "I cannot remember the
Kuypers part, but the Bruce part I remember very well."

"My mother was Mrs. Kuypers before she married Mr.
Chappell, and Mr. Chappell died when my brother Ben was
six years old, and little Lizzy was a baby."

"Lizzy was my godchild," said Mrs. Molyneux, who now
remembered everything.

"Certainly she was, Mrs. Molyneux, and last month
Lizzy was married to as good a fellow as ever presided
over the melting of ingots. We marry them earlier at the
West than you do here."

"Where Lizzie would have been," he said more gravely,
addressing Tom again, "where my mother would have been,
or where I should have been but for your father and
mother here, it would be hard to tell. And all to-day I
have taken it for granted that to him, as to me, this has
been one part of that old Christmas! Surely you
remember?" he turned to Mrs. Molyneux.

Yes, Mrs. Molyneux did remember, but her eyes were
all running over with tears and she did not say so.

"Mr. Molyneux," said Bruce Kuypers, again addressing
Tom, "seventeen years ago this blessed day, there was a
Christmas morning in the poor old tenement above
Massachusetts Avenue such as you never saw, and such as
I hope you never may see.

"There was fire in the stove because your father had
sent the coal. There was oatmeal mush on the table
because your father paid my mother's scot at your
father's grocer.

"But there was not much jollity in that house, and
there were no Christmas presents, but what your mother
had sent to Bruce and Ben and Flora, and even to the
baby. Still we kept up such courage as we could.
It was a terribly cold day, and there was a wet storm.

"All of a sudden a carriage stopped at the door, and
in came your father here. He came to say that that day's
mail had brought a letter from Dr. Wilder of the navy,
conveying the full certificate that William Chappell's
death was caused by exposure in the service. That
certificate was what my mother needed for her pension.
She never could get it, but your father here had sifted
and worried and worked. The `Macedonian' arrived
Thursday at New York, and had Dr. Wilder on board, and
Friday afternoon your father had Wilder's letter, and he
left his own Christmas dinner to make light my mother's
and mine. That was not all. Your father, as he came,
had stopped to see Mr. Birdsall, who was the Speaker of
the House. He had seen the Speaker before, and had said
kind things about me. And that day the Speaker told him
to tell me to come and see him at his room at the Capitol
next day. Oh! how my mother dressed me up! Was there
ever such a page seen before! What with your father's
kind words and my dear mother's extra buttons, the
Speaker made me his own page the next day, and there I
served for four years. It was then that I was big enough
to go into the War Department, and Mr. Goodsell--he was
the next Speaker, if you remember--recommended me there.

"After that," said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did
not see you so often, but I used to see you
sometimes, and I did not think"--this with a roguish
twinkling of the eye--"that you forgot your young friends
so soon."

"I remember you," said Tom. "I used to think you
were the grandest man in Washington. You gave me the
first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some
exceptional fall of snow."

"I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now," said
Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; "he always
bought things for our stockings. I have a Noah's Ark
upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had
a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa
Claus. I believe I thought Santa Claus' name was
Nicholas Bruce. I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce
had any other name."

"If you had said you were Mr. Chappell," said Mr.
Molyneux, "I should have known you in a minute."

"But I was not," said the young man, laughing.

"Well, if you had said you were `Bruce,' I should
have known."

"Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at
Gem City nobody calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy.
So I said `Mr. Kuypers,' forgetting that I had ever been
a boy. But now I am in Washington again, I shall
remember that things change here very fast in ten years.
And yet not so fast as they change at the mines."

And now everybody was at ease. How well Mrs.
Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not
speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his
story! It was in their young married life. She had her
father and mother to dine with her, and the event was
really a trial in her young experience. And then, just
as the old folks were expected, her husband came dashing
in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because
he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell,
and she had to tell her father and mother, when they
came, that they must all wait for his return.

The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem
attracted to Washington by some fatal law. It had been
two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been
asked to hunt her up and help her. A letter had come,
asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and
Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells. But the
money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and
the wolf was very near the Chappells' door, when the
telegraph announced the "Macedonian." Mr. Molyneux had
telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder. Dr. Wilder had
some sense of Christmas promptness. He remembered poor
Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough
certificate. This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux
had carried to the poor old tenement of Massachusetts
Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day--and
this.

"Why," said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were
speaking aloud, "it seems so queer that Christmas
comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about
that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell's!

"Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux's health
every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used
to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came
down the chimney!"

"As, at another place," said Matty, "they thought of
Mr. Bruce--of Noah's Ark memory."

"Anyway," said Mr. Molyneux, "any crumbs of comfort
we scattered that day were BREAD UPON THE WATERS."

Of Mr. Kuypers's quick journey the main points have
been told. Six days before, by some good luck, which
could hardly have been expected, the "Gem City Medium's"
despatch from Washington was full enough to be
intelligible. It was headed, "ANOTHER SWINDLER NAILED."
It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement
office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during
the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande. It
had now been discovered that there never was any such
expedition, and the correspondent of the Associated Press
hoped that justice would be done.

The moment Bruce Kuypers read this he was anxious.
Before an hour passed he had determined to cross to the
Pacific train eastward. Before night he was in a
sleeping-car. Day by day as he met Eastern papers, he
searched for news of the investigation. Day by day he
met it, but thanks to his promptness he had arrived in
time. It was pathetic to hear him describe his
anxiety from point to point, and they were all hushed to
silence when he told how glad he was when he found he
should certainly appear on Christmas Day.

After the dinner, another procession, not wholly
unlike the rabble rout of the morning, moved from the
dining-room to the great front parlor, where the tree was
lighted, and parcels of gray and white and brown lay
round on mantel, on piano, on chairs, on tables, and on
the floor.

No; this tale is too long already. We will not tell
what all the presents were to all the ten,--to Venty,
Chloe, Diana, and all of their color. Only let it tell
that all the ten had presents. To Mr. Kuypers's
surprise, and to every one's surprise, indeed, there were
careful presents for him as for the rest, but it must be
confessed that Horace and Laura had spelled Chipah a
little wildly. The truth was that each separate person
had feared that he would feel a little left on one
side,--he to whom so much was due on that day. And each
person, severally, down to the Brick himself, had gone
secretly, without consulting the others, to select from
his own possessions something very dear, and had wrapped
it up and marked it for the stranger. When Mr. Kuypers
opened a pretty paper, to find Matty's own illustrated
Browning, he was touched indeed. When in a rough brown
paper he found the Brick's jack-knife labelled "FOR THE
MAN," the tears stood in his eyes.

The next day the "Evening Lantern" contained this
editorial article:--

"The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr.
Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the
periodical press for some days, and has even been
adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of
metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday.
The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put
in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux
himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of
manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical
memorial of times that tried men's souls. The committee
and other gentlemen present examined this curious record
with great interest. Not to speak of the minor details,
an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives
full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the
skill with which they executed the commission given them
in a department quite out of their line. Our brethren of
the `Argus' will be pleased to know that every grain of
oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous
$47,000, are accounted for in detail. The authenticated
signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza
and the mythical Captain Cole appear. Very valuable
letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with
the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented
Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those
Spanish turncoats and their allies.

"We cannot say that we regret the attention which has
thus been given to a very important piece of history, too
long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs.
We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest
once more against this preposterous system of
`Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every
niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the
House degrades itself to the work of the common
scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation
into some subject where all well informed persons are
fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure,
etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.'"

But I fear no one at the Molyneux mansion had "the
lantern." They had "found a man," and did not need a
lantern to look farther.

It was as Mr. Molyneux had said: he had cast his
Bread upon the Waters, and he had found it after many
days.

-THE END-
Edward Everett Hale's short story: Bread On The Waters

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