Life and Adventures of Santa Claus & Other Christmas Novels. Люси Мод Монтгомери

even at that hour help was near, and from the hand he loved best in the world, which would make it ten thousand times sweeter when it reached him.

      It was going to be an awful wrench to give up the invention, for now, at the moment of abandoning it, he saw, or thought he saw, that he was right at last, and that it could not fail. It was useless to try it as it was, yet he would, just once more. He adjusted the tangent-balance and the valves; he put in the supply of the chemical with the long name and screwed down the hermetic plug. With the small hand air-pump he produced the first vacuum which was necessary; all was ready, every joint and stuffing-box was lubricated, the spring of the balance was adjusted to a nicety. But the engine would not start, though he turned the fly-wheel with his hand again and again, as if to encourage it. Of course it would not turn alone! He understood perfectly that the one piece on which all depended must be made over again, exactly the other way. That was all!

      There was the wooden model of it, all ready for the foundry that would not cast it for nothing. If only the wooden piece would serve for a moment's trial! But he knew that this was folly; it would not stand the enormous strain an instant, and the joints could not possibly be made air-tight.

      He was utterly worn out by all he had been through during the long day, and he fell asleep in his chair towards morning, his head on his breast, his feet struck out straight before him, one arm hanging down beside him and his other hand thrust into his pocket. He looked more like a shabby lay figure stuffed with sawdust than like a living man. If Newton had come down and found him lying there under the lamplight he would have started back and shuddered, and waited a while before he could find courage to come nearer.

      But the man was only very sound asleep, and he did not wake till the December dawn gleamed through the clear winter's sky and made the artificial light look dim and smoky; and when he opened his eyes it was he himself who started to find himself there in the cold before his great failure, in broad daylight.

      Nevertheless, he had slept soundly, and felt better able to face all the trouble that was in store for him. He stirred the embers in the stove, put in some kindling and a supply of coal, and warmed himself, still heavy with sleep, and glad to waken consciously, by degrees, and to feel that his resolution was not going to break down.

      When he felt quite himself he left the room and went upstairs cautiously, lest he should wake the boy, though it was really time to get up, and Newton was already dressing.

      "I'll walk into town with you," said Overholt when they were at breakfast in the parlour. "It will do me good to get some air, and I must see about selling those things. There's no time to be lost."

      Newton swallowed his hominy and bread and butter and milk, and reflected on the futility of the sacrifice he had made, since his father insisted on selling everything for old metal; but he said nothing, because he was dreadfully disappointed.

      Near the town they met the postman. As a rule Barbara got the mail when she went to market, and Overholt was not even going to ask the man if there were any letters for him. But the postman stopped him. There was one from his wife, and it was registered. He signed the little receipt for it, the man passed them on his rounds, and they slackened their pace as Overholt broke the seal.

      He uttered a loud exclamation when he had glanced at the contents, and he stood still in the road. Newton stared at him in surprise.

      "A thousand dollars!" he cried, overcome with amazement. "A thousand dollars! Oh, Helen, Helen—you've saved my life!"

      He got to the side of the road and leaned against the fence, clutching the letter and the draft in his hand, and gazing into his son's face, half crazy with delight.

      "She's saved it all for me, boy. Do you understand? Your mother has saved all her salary for the Motor, and here it is! Look at it, look at it! It's success, it's fame, it's fortune for us all! Oh, if she were only here!"

      Newton understood and rejoiced. He forgot his poor little attempt to help, and his own disappointment, and everything except the present glorious truth—not unadorned by the pleasant vision of the Christmas turkey, vast now, and smoking, and flanked by perfect towers of stiff cranberry jelly, ever so much better than mere liquid cranberry sauce; in the middle distance, behind the noble dish, a noble pyramid of ice-cream raised its height, and yellow cream-cakes rose beyond, like many little suns on the far horizon. In that first moment of delight there was almost a Christmas tree, and the mother's face beside it; but that was too much; they faded, and the rest remained, no mean forecast of a jolly time.

      "That's perfectly grand!" Newton cried when he got his breath after his surprise at the announcement. "Besides, I told you so. What did I say? She wouldn't let you give up the Motor! I knew she wouldn't! Who's right now, father? That's something like what I call a mother! But then she always was!"

      He was slightly incoherent, but that did not matter at all. Nothing mattered. In his young beatific vision he saw the bright wheel going round and round in a perfect storm of turkeys, and it was all his mother's doing.

      Overholt only half heard, for he had been reading the letter; the letter of a loving wife who believes in her husband and gives him all she has for his work, with every hope, every encouragement, and every blessing and Christmas wish.

      "There's no time to be lost!" Overholt said, repeating the words he had spoken in a very different mood and tone half an hour earlier. "I won't walk on with you, my boy, for I must go back and get the wooden model for the foundry. They'll do it for me now, fast enough! And I can pay what I owe at the bank, and there will be plenty left over for your Christmas too!"

      "Oh, bother my Christmas, father!" answered Newton with a fine indifference which he did not feel. "The Motor's the thing! I want to see that wheel go round for a Christmas present!"

      "It will! It shall! It must! I promise you that!" The man was almost beside himself with joy.

      No misgiving disturbed him. He had the faith that tosses mountains aside like pebbles, now that the means were in his hand. He had the little fulcrum for his lever, which was all Archimedes required to move the world. He had in him the certainty of being right that has sent millions of men to glory or destruction.

      That day was one of the happiest in all his life, either before or, afterwards. He could have believed that he had fallen asleep at the moment when he had quite broken down, and that a hundred years of change had glided by, like a watch in the night, when he opened his wife's letter and wakened in a blaze of joy and hope and glorious activity. Nothing he could remember of that kind could compare with his pride and honourable satisfaction when he walked into the bank two hours afterwards, with his head high, and said he should be glad to take up the note he had signed yesterday and have the balance of the cheque placed to his credit; and few surprises which the partner who had obliged him could recollect, had equalled that worthy gentleman's amazement when the debt was paid so soon.

      "If you had only told me that you would be in funds so soon, Mr. Overholt," he said, "I should not have thought of troubling you. Here is your note. Will you kindly look at it and tear it up?"

      "I did not know," answered Overholt, doing as he was told.

      It is a curious fact that the little note lay in a locked drawer of the partner's magnificent table, instead of being put away in the safe with other and larger notes, where it belonged. It may seem still stranger that, on the books, Overholt's account showed that it had been balanced by a deposit exactly equal to the deficit, made by the partner himself, instead of by crediting the amount of the note. But Overholt never knew this, for a pass-book had always been a mystery to him, and made his head ache. The banker had thought of his face some time after he had gone out with his battered umbrella and his shabby shoulders rounded as under a burden, and somehow the Christmas spirit must have come in quietly and touched the rich man too, though even the stenographer did not see what happened. For he had once been in terrible straits himself, a quarter of a century ago, and some one had helped him just in time, and he knew what it meant to slink out of a big bank, in shabby clothes, his back bowed under the heavy weight of debt and failure.

      Overholt never knew; but he expressed his warm thanks for what now seemed a small favour, and with his wooden model of the casting, done