  Everybody in that part of the city knew Old Claus; that is, they knew him by sight; very few had ever spoken to him or heard his voice. The grocer and the provision man, and one or two others said he was civil enough to them, that his name was Jonathan R. Claus, spelt with a u, not a w, and that he paid his bills promptly. That was about all anybody knew of him. What a surly, grim old man he was, as you met him on a cold winter’s afternoon on his way home from his marketing; his long white hair and beard blowing about his head, his forehead puckered into a frown, his stout cane striking the pavements as if he hated the very earth he walked on! Grown people gave him the width of the sidewalk; children shouted after him, “Old Claus, Show your claws!” and then dodged around the corner in terror, although One cold December evening, when the twilight had fallen early, hastened by leaden skies and a few shivering flakes of snow, he sat in his own room, solitary as usual, and even more than usually grim, for he was thinking over his past. Now, thinking over one’s past may be a very cheerful occupation or a very gloomy one. Old Claus undoubtedly found his full of shadows. He remembered how he was left an orphan, when still a small boy; how he had suffered from cold and want, and had been buffeted and scolded and ill-used, until he ran away from the people who had taken charge of him (he had no home nor friends); how he had worked hard, had saved his money, and had become a very rich man. Still he had longed to be richer, and, retiring from regular business, he had gone far away to search for a sunken treasure in tropical seas. He had failed to find it, but more eager than ever, he mined for gold, without success. Again, it was the buried hoard of a pirate which attracted him; but months of fruitless labor had been thrown away in a vain attempt to discover exactly where it lay. So he had spent his years, always in search of a Treasure, which had become the ruling idea of his life; The home he had chosen was as strange as the life he had lived; a huge, old-fashioned house, which had once been occupied by a wealthy family, but had long lain empty, save for the rats that scampered through its wide halls and gloomy chambers, and the spiders that spun their webs unhindered across the blurred window-panes. The city had grown up about the house, and it was now part of a brick block. Indeed, one wing of the ancient building formed a portion of the tenement house next door, where it seemed as if men wrangled and staggered, and ragged women scolded and wept, and children cried from hunger and cold, all night long. But the walls were very thick, and the occupant of the lonely chamber heard them not. “Christmas Eve,” muttered Old Claus to himself. “I heard them say it in the streets. Merry Christmas! merry, merry Christmas!” he repeated bitterly. “Right merry for me. What a wretched, useless failure of a wreck I am!” As he spoke he stamped his foot angrily upon the floor. There was a crash in the room behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he found that a large picture, an old portrait, the frame of which had been built into the wall and alone remained of the former splendor of the mansion, lay face downward upon the floor. Jarred by his heavy footfall, the Claus’ glance wandered to the wall where it had been fastened. Then he started to his feet, the old fire returning to his eyes. In place of the picture was an opening, with a deep space beyond. He raised himself on tiptoe, and saw what appeared to be the top of a flight of steps, built into the thickness of the wall, and leading downward. “Treasure at last!” he stammered, gazing greedily at the dusty steps, down which a huge rat scrambled, squeaking. “Treasure at last! I knew luck would turn! After all these years! It is mine, it is mine!” Hastening to the mantel, he took down a small lamp, lighted it with trembling fingers, and dragging a chair to the wall beneath the aperture, climbed up to and into it. Yes, it was plainly a stone flight of steps. What bags of gold must lie at the bottom of that long-hidden passage? He tested the stairway cautiously with his foot, and, finding it apparently secure, slowly descended, the space being barely wide enough for him to squeeze through. Eight, nine, ten steps down. Then a sharp turn to the right! two more steps, and he emerged from the narrow passage into what once must have been a huge fireplace, having a hidden door in one side, some freak of the ancient builders, to allow a person to pass from one portion of the old house to the other without detection. As Claus glanced about him his heart sank. There was no sign of a treasure. The chimney overhead had been stopped with stone slabs, and the original opening of the fireplace was closed by a wooden partition, one panel of which was hinged and bolted so as to form a small door. Doubtless the people in the next house were ignorant of this, and, probably, of the existence of the fireplace itself. It was very cold, and the disappointed man shivered as he prepared to retrace his steps to his own quarters. Suddenly he heard a noise in the room beyond the fireboard. It was the sound of a child sobbing quietly to itself. In another moment a heavy, drunken step sounded on the bare floor. “Are ye goin’ to stop cryin’, Moll, or will I give ye the stick agin?” demanded a woman’s harsh voice. “What’s the matter now?” “I won’t—any—more,” he could hear the child answer. “I don’t—mean to. Only I was thinkin’ it was Christmas to-morrow, and I wouldn’t—get anything,—mother used to”— “Stop that!” warningly. It was evidently hard work to control the sobs, now. Old Claus clenched his fist, and resolved that if he heard the sound of a blow, that fireboard would go down. There was silence for a minute. Then the woman staggered off, muttering: “Don’t let me hear any more from ye the night. Go to sleep, d’ ye hear? You must be off with yer basket agin in the mornin’.” Five minutes later a singular sight might have been seen in front of the big house. It was nothing less than Old Claus himself, clad in his shaggy fur coat, setting forth through the darkness and snow, which was now falling fast. Past liquor saloons ablaze with light and hung, alas! with holly and mistletoe; past the little Mission Church at the corner, where he lingered an instant to catch the notes of a glad Christmas carol; away from the wretched and squalid quarter of the city he marched, halting only when he reached a toy-shop, where there were multitudes of talking dolls and barking dogs and mewing cats and bleating sheep; where people tumbled over each other in their eagerness to buy, and blew into all the toy horns and jingled all the toy pianos and laughed from the pure joy of Christmastide, like God’s own little children. It was a good half hour again before Old Claus dismissed at his own door the boy who had helped him bring home his bundles from that blessed toy-shop. The boy went off whistling, too, with a bright new silver dollar in his pocket. It took the old man three trips to get his purchases down that secret stairway. I don’t know how he ever got the sled through anyway; nor the big doll with eyes that winked upside down, nor the sheep, nearly life-size, which baa-ed loudly in the passage; and the tricycle was the worst of all; but he did it and landed them safely in the old fireplace, which surely never contained such precious Now came the trying moment. Could he open that long-disused door without waking the child, who now was evidently sleeping soundly? Dear old door—I believe it knew, as well as you do, what was wanted of it. Never a squeak it gave, as Claus, with infinite pains, drew back the rusty bolt and softly opened it. He stepped inside the room, shading the lamp with his hand. It was a very small room indeed, with great holes in the bare plastering, and a broken pane of glass through which the keen wind was blowing. The room was even colder than the fireplace. In one corner was a small bed, and in it lay a little girl of perhaps six years, her tangled hair scattered over the bundle of ragged clothes—evidently her own poor little gown—that served for a pillow; the dingy counterpane drawn tightly up around her neck to keep out the bitter cold. There was a broken chair and wooden table in the room besides; nothing else. From the back of the chair, which was propped against the wall close by the bed, hung one small stocking; so small that it seemed better fitted for a The old man set down his lamp and tiptoed back to the fireplace. He took out the toys one by one, and placed them on the floor. He filled the poor little stocking with candy; the first package of which came near betraying him by falling directly through a large hole in the heel. Luckily he caught it before it reached the floor, and squeezed in a good-sized rubber ball to replace it. Last of all he took up the sheep, with a sigh of relief at his success in depositing all his gifts in the room without disturbing the small sleeper. But alas for human calculations! In his excitement he gave that dreadful sheep an unlucky squeeze, and without the slightest warning it gave utterance to another prolonged baa-a-a! even louder than before. The child opened her eyes wide and sat up in bed. There stood, in front of a new and cavernous fireplace in the wall, an old man with shaggy coat and cap, and flowing white beard, his stooping back sprinkled with snow, with a lamb in his arms, and surrounded with such a glory of toys as she had never dreamed of in her little starved life. One moment only she gazed; then leaped from her bed and sprang into his arms, crying: “O Santa Claus! Santa Claus! Have you come! Oh, take me away with you, do, do!” At the child’s first cry of “Santa Claus!” the old man stood stupefied, shaking his head and muttering Before he could fairly collect his wits, he heard that heavy, irregular footfall coming up the stairs. He had only one thought—to save the child. Backing hastily into the fireplace he closed and bolted the door behind him, groped his way up the stone steps, and sat down in front of his own fire, breathless, with his new-found treasure still in his arms. The faint sound of a cry came up from the room below, but whether it was of terror, or delight at finding such extraordinary personal property miraculously substituted for the late occupant, he could not tell. The light of the fire, on which Claus had thrown fresh fuel, shone upon the child face upraised to his. “What is your name, little one?” he asked in tones he hardly recognized as his own. They called her Moll, she said, but that was not her real name, which she had forgotten. “How would you like to be called ‘Agnes’?” said Claus, his old eyes growing misty over some long-buried memory. “Oh, that’s a nice name, Santa Claus! And I’m so sleepy!” The old housekeeper was thereupon roused from her slumbers in a distant corner of the house, and Next morning Old Claus, feeling very much more like Young Claus than he had for years, put an end to the wonderful stories flying about the neighborhood by acknowledging his own agency in little Agnes’ disappearance. An arrangement was easily made with the dissipated woman who, it seemed, had taken charge of the child and ill-used her cruelly since her mother’s death. The proper papers having been drawn, Mr. Jonathan Claus became the legal guardian of the little waif, with whom he shortly afterward removed to a more cheerful quarter of the city. Agnes lost all her Christmas presents, to be sure, for not one of them ever could be found—except the sheep which had brought her good fortune, and who was allowed to baa to his heart’s content that Christmas day; but Santa Claus (as she persisted in calling her deliverer) replaced them, with interest. That is the way Old Claus found his treasure; not only little Agnes, though she soon became dearer to him than all his wealth, but that most precious of treasures, Love. |
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