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he cried, "are you ill?"

      "Is that you, Dawson?" came a voice from the darkness.

      "Yes. Did--did you put out the gas?"

      "No."

      "Are you ill?"

      "No; but I'm deuced uncomfortable What's this mattress stuffed with-- needles?"

      "Needles? No. It's a hair mattress. Isn't it all right?"

      "Not by a great deal. I feel as if I had been sleeping on a porcupine. Light up the gas and let's see what the trouble is."

      Dawson did as he was told, wondering meanwhile why the gas had gone out. No one had turned it out, and yet the key was unmistakably turned; and, what was worse, on ripping open Perkins's mattress, a most disquieting state of affairs was disclosed.

      Every single hair in it was standing on end!

      A half-hour later four figures were to be seen wending their way northward through the darkness--two men, a huge mastiff, and a Chinaman. The group was made up of Dawson, his guest, his servant, and his dog. Dampmere was impossible; there was no train until morning, but not one of them was willing to remain a moment longer at Dampmere, and so they had to walk.

      "What do you suppose it was?" asked Perkins, as they left the third mile behind them.

      "I don't know," said Dawson; "but it must be something terrible. I don't mind a ghost that will make the hair of living beings stand on end, but a nameless invisible something that affects a mattress that way has a terrible potency that I have no desire to combat. It's a mystery, and, as a rule, I like mysteries, but the mystery of Dampmere I'd rather let alone."

      "Don't say a word about the--ah--the mattress, Charlie," said Perkins, after awhile. "The fellows'll never believe it."

      "No. I was thinking that very same thing," said Dawson.

      And they were both true to Dawson's resolve, which is possibly why the mystery of Dampmere has never been solved.

      If any of my readers can furnish a solution, I wish they would do so, for I am very much interested in the case, and I truly hate to leave a story of this kind in so unsatisfactory a condition.

      A ghost story without any solution strikes me as being about as useful as a house without a roof.

      A Little Book of Christmas

      (John Kendrick Bangs)

       Table of Contents

       A Toast to Santa Clause

       The Conversion of Hetherington

       A Merry Christmas Pie

       The Child Who Had Everything But

       A Holiday Wish

       Santa Clause and Little Billee

       Christmas Eve

       The House of the Seven Santas

      A Toast to Santa Clause

       Table of Contents

      Whene'er I find a man who don't

       Believe in Santa Claus,

       And spite of all remonstrance won't

       Yield up to logic's laws,

       And see in things that lie about

       The proof by no means dim,

       I straightway cut that fellow out,

       And don't believe in him.

       The good old Saint is everywhere

       Along life's busy way.

       We find him in the very air

       We breathe day after day—

       Where courtesy and kindliness

       And love are joined together,

       To give to sorrow and distress

       A touch of sunny weather.

       We find him in the maiden's eyes

       Beneath the mistletoe,

       A-sparkling as the star-lit skies

       All golden in their glow.

       We find him in the pressure of

       The hand of sympathy,

       And where there's any thought of love

       He's mighty sure to be.

       So here's to good old Kindliheart!

       The best bet of them all,

       Who never fails to do his part

       In life's high festival;

       The worthy bearer of the crown

       With which we top the Saint.

       A bumper to his health, and down

       With them that say he ain't!

      The Conversion of Hetherington

       Table of Contents

       I

      Hetherington wasn't half a bad sort of a fellow, but he had his peculiarities, most of which were the natural defects of a lack of imagination. He didn't believe in ghosts, or Santa Claus, or any of the thousands of other things that he hadn't seen with his own eyes, and as he walked home that rather chilly afternoon just before Christmas and found nearly every corner of the highway decorated with bogus Saints, wearing the shoddy regalia of Kris-Kringle, the sight made him a trifle irritable. He had had a fairly good luncheon that day, one indeed that ought to have mellowed his disposition materially, but which somehow or other had not so resulted. In fact, Hetherington was in a state of raspy petulance that boded ill for his digestion, and when he had reached the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, the constant iteration and reiteration of these shivering figures of the god of the Yule had got on his nerves to such an extent as to make him aggressively quarrelsome. He had controlled the asperities of his soul tolerably well on the way uptown, but the remark of a small child on the highway, made to a hurrying mother, as they passed a stalwart-looking replica of the idol of his Christmas dreams, banging away on a tambourine to attract attention to the iron pot before him, placed there to catch the pennies of the charitably inclined wayfarer—"Oh, mar, there's Sandy Claus now!"—was too much for him.

      "Tush! Nonsense!" ejaculated Hetherington, glowering at the shivering figure in the turkey-red robe. "The idea of filling children's minds up with such balderdash! Santa Claus, indeed! There isn't a genuine Santa Claus in the whole bogus bunch."

      The Saint on the corner banged his tambourine just under Hetherington's ear with just enough force to jar loose the accumulated irascibility of the well-fed gentleman.

      "This is a fine job for an able-bodied man like you!" said Hetherington with a sneer. "Why don't you go to work instead of helping to perpetuate this annual fake?"

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