The Torch and Other Tales | Page 7

see the child in
the land of dreams with his dog asleep beside him. And then he gave
Minnie a gift also--a piece of very fine cloth to make herself a gown.
And he promised to come and eat his Christmas dinner along with them,
which Joseph insisted he should do. Ford was on night duty at the time
and he left the house with the old poacher and saw him to his own
home, while good words passed between them. Then young Ford went
to his beat and wondered as he walked at such a fine reformation, and
felt proud of himself to think he'd had a hand in it. Yet, though seldom
it came uppermost in his thoughts, by some chance, the ancient, awful
look on Teddy's face rose to his mind that Christmas Eve. Joseph had a
theory, sure founded on Scripture, and he stoutly believed that the
poacher had harboured a devil in him in the past.
"Yet now without a doubt it has been cast out," thought Joseph, "and no
man will ever see it look out of his eyes no more, because it have gone,
thank God."
His duty done he went home to rest; but the man's sleep was broken
just after peep-o'-day by the awfullest scream ever he heard.

His child it was. Joey slept in a little room alongside his parents and, of
course, Minnie was up to him like a flash of lightning, with Joseph
after her. He said at a later time that 'Santa Claus' had got in his dreams
and he had suffered all night from a great uneasiness; but he was
sleeping sound enough when, just after six o'clock, the child screamed
and screamed again. And still he screamed when his mother got to him
and his father followed after, stopping only to light a candle.
Poor Joey was out of bed with his mother's arms round him when his
father got there; and on the bed lay Teddy's box of sweets scattered
over the cover-lid, with the Christmas stocking dragged up also, but its
contents not yet explored. The sweeties came first, and Joey had
opened them and now he screamed and pointed and screamed again,
but for the moment couldn't speak. He pointed into one corner of his
little cubby-hole, and then the tears came flooding his cheeks and he
stopped screaming and clung to his mother and wept as if his heart
would break.
Ford, policeman-like, saw it all instanter, and a curtain seemed to lift
off his soul, and there glared the eyes of 'Santa Claus' into his mind's
eyes. In a second he put two and two together and understood why,
deep in his brain that night, had hidden such a feeling of stark care.
"Have you touched they sweets?" he asked, shaking the little boy to
make him attend. "Speak for your life, Joey! Have you ate one?"
Still the child couldn't collect himself. He screamed again when his
father shook him, and it was clear some fearful thing had overtook him;
but his grief didn't rise from no pain of body, and in truth the answer to
Joseph's question lay before his eyes, if he'd but understood the truth.
No scream would Joey have screamed, nor tear shed, if he'd helped
himself from the box; but 'twas a case when a big heart saved a little
body, for Joey had put another creature before himself and the first
sweetie out of the gift had went to his pup. 'Twas chocolates 'Santa
Claus' had left, and when the dog's jaws closed upon his little master's
gift, he gave one jump and leapt off the bed and was stone dead in three
seconds before the child got to him.

All that the parents presently learned from the shaking babe, and the
moment Joseph grasped the truth, he left his wife to praise God and got
on his clothes and ran without ceasing to Teddy Pegram's house. And
in no Christmas temper did he run neither, for he'd have well liked, in
his fury, to rob the hangman of a job. The size of the intended crime
swept over him in all its horror as he measured the past and
remembered all that the poacher had said and done; and his feet very
near gave under him to think of what a fellow creature can harbour hid
from every other human eye.
But he wasn't overmuch surprised to find Teddy Pegram didn't answer
the door, nor yet to discover the place was all unlocked. He doubted not
that his awful enemy had departed overnight, and it came out presently
that the last at Little Silver to see Pegram was Ford himself on the
previous evening.
So he left it at that, then, and went home