IT was the day before Thanksgiving. Cold weather had come on early. The ground had been frozen solid for several days, and the country roads were “smooth as glass”; so Grandpa Kirke said when he came home from the post-office Tuesday afternoon. “But I shouldn’t wonder if we were to have snow before morning,” he added. And at this the little granddaughter Lucy L. clapped her hands gleefully. The boy Whittier said nothing, but presently a noise was heard up in the wood-house chamber, and Mrs. Kirke said in a startled tone, “What’s that?”

Grandpa stepped to the door and called, “Whittier!”

“Sir?” responded the boy quickly.

“Oh! you are there.”

“Coming in a minute; do you want anything?” said Whittier, and in less than a minute the boy appeared below stairs with his sled. “Looks pretty well to start on a second winter with!” he said, as he dusted and examined the treasure. “Say, Lucy Larcom, how will you like to ride to school on the Flyaway to-morrow morning?”

Grandma laughed, and said, “You seem to be counting on snow, for sure.”

“But you know grandpa said maybe it would snow, and when grandpa says maybe, it most always comes so,” said Lucy.

Sure enough snow lay on the ground, pure and white, to the depth of several inches when they looked out that morning before Thanksgiving Day. The children could scarcely be prevailed upon to eat their breakfast, so eager were they to get off to school with the Flyaway. Grandma said:

“This won’t last long; snow that falls upon frozen ground never stays. It is the snow that comes in the mud that makes sleighing to last.” This somewhat chilled their expectations, but Lucy concluded that the snow would last until recess, anyway. As the two started off grandma, watching them from the window, said with a sigh, “How much Whittier looks like our John at his age!”

“God forbid that he should grow up to remind you of John!” replied Mr. Kirke, almost bitterly.

Mrs. Kirke washed the dishes and tidied the room in silence, then stepping to her husband’s side she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said softly, “Joseph, to-morrow is Thanksgiving Day!”

“Well?”

“I have made the pies and the pudding and the plum cake that John always liked so well, and now if John should come home?”

“Well?” this time the monosyllable was spoken a trifle less impatiently.

“If he should come home you would receive him? Remember, Joseph, John is our first-born.”

“’Tain’t no ways likely he’ll come!”

“I don’t know; someway I’ve been thinking lik’sanyway he’ll be thinking about the old home when Thanksgiving comes round. Anyway, I’ve made them things for him, but then,” she added, more to herself than to her husband, “I’m always ready for him. The bed is always made up for him, and there is always something cooked that he likes.”

Meantime the children had gone on their way, Whittier drawing his sister upon the Flyaway, bending all his energies to the task, for the sledding was not very good, so it happened that Lucy was the first to spy a strange sight for that part of the country.

“Look, Whitty! what is that coming?” exclaimed his sister.

Then Whittier stopped, and Lucy in her excitement jumped off the sled and stood beside him, half-frightened.

“Why, that must be one of them things they call a bicycle!” said the boy; “I’ve read a lot about them, and Tom Green saw one in Galway when he was over there staying with his uncle. I guess this is the first one ever got around this way. My! how he skims along. But I wish he would stop, so we could see the machine better.”

As if divining the boy’s wish, the bicyclist came to a stand-still and dismounted as he reached the place where the children waited.

“Halloo, my boy! How’ll you swap? I think I’d like to go coasting this morning; those hills over there look as though they might give a chance for some sport.”

“Say,” continued the stranger without giving Whittier a chance to speak, “do you s’pose a fellow could get a breakfast anywhere around here?”

“I don’t know,” replied Whittier slowly. “I guess, though, that grandma would give you some. I’ve heard her say she never could find it in her heart to turn a tramp away because maybe uncle John might be wanting something to eat and she would want somebody to give him a meal.”

The stranger stooped down and seemed to be brushing the snow off the wheel, and when he spoke it was in a very quiet tone:

“Where does grandma live, and what is her name?”

“Her name is Grandma Kirke, and she lives over there in the white house you see by the red barn.”

“And is there a Grandpa Kirke?”

“Of course! we’d have to have a grandpa or we couldn’t get along, could we?” said Lucy, startled out of her shyness at the thought that there could be a house without a grandpa.

“There is just Grandpa and Grandma Kirke and us,” said Whittier; “we used to have an uncle John, though Lucy Larcom and I came here after he went away. He has been gone five years, but you better not say anything about him if you go there, because it always makes grandma cry.”

“And does grandpa cry?”

“No; he only looks sober, but I guess he feels awful bad about uncle John, for he says it was rum that made him go off, and grandpa hates rum like poison. He won’t have even cider in the house, and he always votes against rum too.”

“And don’t grandma make currant wine and keep it in the cellar for Thanksgiving and Christmas?” asked the stranger.

“My! no! grandma hates everything that has alcohol in it. She wouldn’t have it anywhere around; but she will give you a cup of coffee, I guess.”

“And you think she would be glad to see John?”

“I know she would!” Then as a thought flashed into his mind, the boy said suddenly, “Say, if you go riding around the country much on that machine maybe you’ll come across my uncle; if you do, just tell him grandma keeps things all ready for him, ’specting him to come, will you?”

“All right, I will; good-by!” and mounting his wheel the stranger rode off towards the little white house which Whittier had pointed out. “As if I didn’t know that house and every room in it!” he said, talking to himself. “And so grandma keeps things ready for her wandering son!” and here he lifted his hand to brush away something from his cheek.

It could not have been a fly that frosty morning, could it?

I have not space to tell you of the stranger’s reception at the farmhouse. There must have been joy in heaven over the returning repentant prodigal; and what a Thanksgiving that was! When the next day the sons and daughters gathered for the feast, and found this long-absent brother returned, their cup of joy and thanksgiving seemed to overflow. But I want to tell you of a bit of talk that took place when uncle John had gathered the children all about him in the afternoon.

They were examining the bicycle, and he had been telling them some incidents of his long journey, when suddenly he said, “Now, children, you think this is a nice thing, and you boys quite envy your old uncle its possession, don’t you?”

“Not quite that, I guess,” replied one of the older boys, “but I’d like to own one.”

“Well, perhaps your father will buy this; I want to sell it.” At this they all looked aghast to think their uncle would be willing to part with such a treasure.

“Just let me tell you something, boys,” he continued; “I am forty years old, and all I possess in the world is this bicycle and a very few dollars which I have earned since I became a sober man. I have thrown away the best part of my life. Here are my brothers with comfortable homes all their own, and I with nothing, and all because of rum! and I began by drinking cider over there at the mill. Boys, let it alone; don’t begin, and you will never be the slave of rum.”

“But, uncle John,” said one, “you are not a slave any more.”

“No; but I shall carry the marks of my fetters to the grave. I tell you it hasn’t paid. Forty years old, and nothing to show for my life! Sign the pledge, boys; sign the pledge, and you will not have to say that when you are forty years old. I trust you will have something more than a bicycle to show for it.”

Faye Huntington.