And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung to her father’s arm, cried aloud, “Oh, Nello, come!  We have all ready for thee.  The Christ-child’s hands are full of gifts, and the old piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and burn nuts with us all the Noel week long—­yes, even to the Feast of the Kings!  And Patrasche will be so happy!  Oh, Nello, wake and come!”

But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, “It is too late.”

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked charity at their hands.  All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been.  It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no fulfilment.

All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were not divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a special grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest there side by side—­forever!

MARKHEIM, by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Yes,” said the dealer, “our windfalls are of various kinds.  Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge.  Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop.  At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled.  “You come to me on Christmas Day,” he resumed, “when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business.  Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly.  I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it.”  The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, “You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?” he continued.  “Still your uncle’s cabinet?  A remarkable collector, sir!”

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief.  Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.