the wind. Rick eased her sheets in turn, snubbing each carefully on its cleat lest it run out too far and prove beyond his strength to haul in. As soon as mainsail, foresail, and jib were drawing to his satisfaction, he ran back to his wheel and eased her gently, until the Laughing Lass was sliding along before the wind on a westerly course. Rick lashed

her wheel again.

The pounding on the companion doors had ceased. Rick saw a narrow crack of light running up between the top of the doors and the hatch cover; they had lighted a lamp again. But they were very still-talking together, probably. Little good it would do them. They were caged all right. By morning he would be right on the coast, God willing. He would pick the best spot he could, a beach if he could find one. He would wait until he felt the crunch of her timbers on the bottom; then he would jump.

But M'Guire and Manuel were not talking, down below there. If the water lapping the schooner's hull had not prevented, Rick would have heard sounds to give him pause. True, they were not startling in themselves just little scraping noises, such as one makes with a hammer while working gently to open a wooden case of eggs or other fragile freight -just a slight straining at pliant wood and rusting nails-just a whispered word, of advice or caution. But they would have meant something to Rick, had he heard them. Meant something! He would not have wasted a second in speculation. He would have leaped- and closed that forward hatch.

But Rick could not hear, and his mind was busy with other thoughts. For the time he seemed safe; freedom, even, and the possibility of home lay just beyond him, out there somewhere in the night. But his heart did not leap at the thought. A great burden seemed pressing it down.

He

You see, he had believed implicitly in Ban Hoag. Had he doubted the boy at the start, he would have felt better now. But he had been taken in as easily, as completely, as you please. Gullible-that was the word. had trusted a friend with the innocence, the pure, unreasoning confidence of a child. And this friend had made of his trust a ladder upon which he had scrambled and climbed, whistling blithely, to safety and comparative affluence. That was what made it hard. Ban Hoag's treachery had done more than shatter Rick's trust in his fellow-men; it had smashed his respect for himself.

The boy dragged himself to his feet and doggedly walked forward to note how his head-sails were drawing. These wharf-rats were all alike. They had different colored hair, they were old and young, tall and short, lean and fat; but all their souls were built in one model-shrunken, slimy, black. How enormously different were they, with their cringing meanness, from the deep-water men he had known!

Rick sat down on a fluke of the starboard anchor, lashed there to the rail, his chin in his hands. Over her bows he could almost feel the darkness slide smoothly upon him, as the schooner sailed on into the night.

Behind him, through the open hatch, a vague shadow lifted itself with a stealthy precision to the level of the deck. But Rick was staring into that black curtain ahead.

How clearly he saw the whole thing now! He remembered the strange contradiction that had suggested itself in Ban Hoag's appearance how there seemed something of two worlds about the boy. It came to him how merrily Ban Hoag had whistled, down there in the galley, when first he had seen the money in the wallet and was considering a way out.

It was perfectly, sickeningly clear. Hoag had had a hundred opportunities to take the money unobserved. He had trumped up that trip aft. Out of thin air he had made of it a vital, tangible necessity. He had slipped the robbed wallet into his "friend's" hand. Secure in his ability to persuade the bos'n, with the money in his pocket he had sped his "friend" to certain disaster, possible death. With the contemptible hypocrisy of a Judas he had said, "Go get 'em-Rick!" and laughed, most likely, within himself.

Rick shut the memory of that falseness from his mind. He found nausea creeping upon him, and fought it down. There were better things to think of. Out ahead there lay somewhere a shore-line. Behind it there must be towns; in towns one can find work; and for work one is paid money. And for money-home!

But no man would he trust hereafter! He had learned his lesson; from now on he would remember it. He would

For

PRETTY Mrs. Brewster sat in the middle of her bedroom floor surrounded by a billowy mass of tissue-paper, layers of cotton-batting, bits of ribbon, tinsel, and tags. She was tying up packages of various shapes and sizes, placing each one when finished in a heaped-up pile at one side. Her face was flushed; wisps of cotton clung to her dress and hair, and she glanced up anxiously now and then at the little clock on the desk as it ticked off the minutes of the short December afternoon.

"I'll never be through-never!" she remarked disconsolately after one of these hurried glances. "And there 's the box for Cousin Henry's family that just must go tonight, and the home box Oh, Nancy Wells!" she broke off suddenly, as she caught sight of a slender little figure standing in the doorway, surveying her with merry brown eyes.

"Nancy Wells! Come right in here. You 're as welcome as-as the day after Christmas!"

"So you 've reached that stage, have you, Ann?" the visitor laughed as she picked her way carefully across the littered floor to an inviting wicker chair near the fire.

"Yes, I have. You know I always begin to feel that way just about this time, Nancy, only it seems to be a mite worse than usual this year.

Ann Brewster stretched out one cramped foot and groaned.

"Here I am just slaving, while you-well you look the very personification of elegant leisure. I suspect every single one of those forty-nine presents on your regular list is wrapped and tied and labeled-mailed, too, if mailed it has to be. Well, you can just take off your coat and hat, Nancy, fold yourself up Turk-like on the floor here, and help me out. I 've an appointment at the dressmaker's for four-thirty, and it's nearly that now. I'm not nearly through, but I just must finish to-day. If there's one thing I'm particular about, Nancy, it is that a gift shall reach the recipient on time. For my part, I don't want a Christmas present a week cold, so as to speak, nor even a day. And, somehow, I always manage to get mine off, even if I do half kill myself doing it."

"Do your Christmas shopping early,""

quoted Nancy, mischievously, as she seated herself obediently on the floor.

"Yes; and, 'only five more shopping days,' Ann smiled ruefully. "Why don't you go on? Those well-meant little reminders I 've had flaunted in my face every time I 've stepped into a store or picked up a daily paper for the past six weeks. They have come to be as familiar as the street sign out there on that lamp-post-and receive about the same amount of attention, too."

"Well after all, Ann, it is a delightful sort of rush, now is n't it? I'm willing to admit that I'd miss it all dreadfully."

Nancy Wells looked about her appreciatively at the chintz-hung room glowing in the warmth of the open wood-fire, and with its pleasant disarray of snowy paper and gay ribbons, its scent of sachet and its holiday air of secrecy and festivity. And not the least of its pleasantness was Ann Brewster's trim little figure in its deep red dress, her cheeks aglow, her black eyes sparkling. A few grains of some glistening powder had sifted into her hair and shone there like dust of jewels."

"My, but that's a lovely package!" Nancy remarked, as Ann cut a square of tissue-paper and measured off a length of silver cord. "And what a clever idea that is! I should never have thought of using cotton batting and a sprinkling of diamond-dust for the top layer."

"Well, you see this is for Cousin Harriet, Nancy. She has everything any one could possibly wish for, and she always sends me such beautiful things that I make a special effort to have my gift to her as dainty as possible and a little different."

Ann paused and glanced at the clock.
"Mercy, look what time it is! I've got to

go.
I wonder if you 'd just as soon stay,
Nancy, and finish up that little pile over
there by the couch. They 're for the fir-
tree cousins down on the farm."

"The fir-tree cousins! Whatever do you mean, Ann?"

Ann laughed gaily as she stood up and shook off the bits of tinsel and ribbon from her skirt.

"Oh, I always call them that in fun," she explained. "They 're Tom's cousins that live down in Maine. The idea struck me, I sup

knitter like Grandma Lewis would know how to use it. Louise is just sixteen, so it 's easy enough to select a bit of neckwear or a handkerchief for her. As for the boys Alec and Joe, I always get them stick-pins,they can't have too many, you know,-and for little Henry a game or toy of some sort. Then Tom adds a box of candy. Promptly one week after Christmas, I receive a perfectly proper, polite letter from Cousin Lucy thanking me in behalf of every member of the fir-tree household. It does sound a bit perfunctory, does n't it, Nancy? Sort of a cut and dried performance all around. Somehow, Christmas is getting to be more and more like that every year, don't you think so? I must confess I 'm glad, positively relieved, when it 's over! I'm always a wreck, mentally as well as physically."

Nancy made no comment; instead she pointed with the scissors to a heap of large and small packages over at one side.

"What do you want done with those, Ann?"

"Oh, they go in the home box. That has to go to-night, too. I was just starting to tie them up. Do you suppose you 'd have time to do them too, Nancy dear? I know I'm just imposing on you. If it was n't that I have to have this dress for the Christmas dance, I should n't go a step. Just put the two piles on my bed when you 've finished wrapping, will you? Then Tom can pack them after dinner. Now I'm off. Good-by and thanks awfully."

A minute later, Nancy Wells heard the front door slam, then the house settled down to an empty quiet, broken only by the rustling of tissue-paper and the click of scissors as Nancy folded and cut and measured and snipped. The fire burned to a bed of dull embers; and beyond the small square window-panes, the snow-lit landscape darkened to dusk.

"There!" said Nancy, as she gave a final pat to the last bow. "And how pretty they look, too," she added, leaning back to survey her handiwork. Then she carried them over to the bed and arranged them in two neat piles.

"Certainly looks like 'Merry Christmas,' all right." With which remark, she put on her coat and hat and went home.

It was several hours later that Ann Brewster, attired in dressing-gown and slippers and with her hair in a braid down her back, surveyed with weariness, compounded with relief, the empty spaces on bed and floor.

The last label, inscribed in Ann's square, half-childish hand, "Merry Christmas from Tom and Ann," had been pasted on while Tom stood by with hammer and nails ready to perform the final offices. And the two boxes, the one for the fir-tree cousins down on the Maine farm, the other for Ann's own family in Michigan, were now on their way to the down-town office. Ann burrowed deeper into the big wicker chair.

"And now that 's over for another year at least," she sighed. "And I 'm too tired to care much whether those boxes reach their destination safely or not. Twelve months from to-night in all probability, I shall be sitting in this same spot making that very same remark. And I used to just love Christmas, too!"

Ann Brewster (she was Ann Martin then) had been brought up in a family where much had been made of the Christmas festival. There had been little money to spare in those days; nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Martin had always contrived to make the day and the season itself one of happy memory to their four children. No elaborate celebration of later years ever held quite the same degree of delight and anticipation shared then by every member of the family. Ann recalled the weeks brimful of plans and mysterious secrets that preceded the day itself, with its simple gifts and its spirit of peace and good will toward all.

It was not so merry a day now, somehow, Ann reflected, staring moodily at the glowing coals in the fireplace. It seemed to have lost its savor. And to be so unreservedly glad when it was over was to admit it a burden. To be sure there was only herself and Tom to celebrate it now, and it was to be expected that much of the old merriment must be lost with the years. She had tried to keep to the letter of the day at least, and the little house had its wreaths of evergreens, its holly and scarlet ribbons. There was always a tiny tree for two, all a-glitter with candles and heaped about with parcels. And the days between Christmas and New Year's were always one round of dances and dinners and teas.

"Tired, Ann?"

A masculine voice broke in on her revery and Tom's broad-shouldered figure filled the doorway.

"Cheer up! The boxes are on their way, or should be shortly, and a few days more will see the season's finish."

"That 's just it, Tom. A few days more,

and the one day for which we 've shopped and slaved for weeks will have come and gone the way of its predecessors. And in our weariness and relief is swallowed up all the real meaning and spirit of that day whose origin was in simplicity itself."

Honestly Ann, how much intelligence or thoughtfulness goes into the average Christmas shopping? To many, it's just a regularly recurring duty. I don't mean that as a general statement by any means, butTom sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed, one shoe grasped in both hands.

We're

Tom whistled thoughtfully, and when he spoke his voice had lost its merry banter. "I guess you 're right there, Ann. certainly a long way off from the old days of five-cent horns and candy canes. A lot of that was youth, of course, but just the same this modern deal is all wrong. It's a selfish proposition, as I look at it. We 're more concerned with getting the thing off our hands and off our minds than with any real desire to add to some one else's pleasure.

"I don't believe I 've ever told you, Ann, about a certain Christmas of mine, long ago. About the nicest I 've ever known."

"Where was it? Do you mean at home?" Ann looked up interested.

"No." Tom's voice changed and a shadow crossed his face.

"You know I never had much of a home, Ann. My parents both died when I was only a little chap, and I was sort of parceled out to various relatives for different seasons of the year. No, this Christmas I'm thinking of was with Cousin Henry and Cousin Lucy. Queer I have n't told you before."

"I knew you spent your summers there," Ann answered a little curiously, "but I never heard of your being there for Christmas.'

"Well, I was, and I 've never forgotten it. It was my first glimpse of what a real homy Christmas can be. The tree was just a home-made affair-that is, the trimmings. We cut the tree ourselves, a beautiful slender fir, and hauled it down on a sled from the hill forest back of the house. We popped corn and made wreaths, strung cranberries, and cut stars out of colored paper. And I tell you that tree was pretty-if it was n't glittering with ornaments and blazing with candles or electric lights."

"Did you have presents?" asked Ann. "Yes. I remember Cousin Henry gave me