The
sun rose in a clear sky above the patched and ragged canopy of the
woods--a weary multitude now resting in the still air.
The children were up looking for tracks of reindeer and breaking
paths in the snow. Sunlight glimmered in far-flung jewels of the
Frost King. They lay deep, clinking as the foot sank in them. At
the Vaughn home it was an eventful day. Santa Claus--well, he is
the great Captain that leads us to the farther gate of childhood
and surrenders the golden key. Many ways are beyond the gate, some
steep and thorny; and some who pass it turn back with bleeding feet
and wet eyes, but the gate opens not again for any that have
passed. Tom had got the key and begun to try it. Santa Claus had
winked at him with a snaring eye, like that of his aunt when she
had sugar in her pocket, and Tom thought it very foolish. The boy
had even felt of his greatcoat and got a good look at his boots and
trousers. Moreover, when he put his pipe away, Tom saw him take a
chew of tobacco--an abhorrent thing if he were to believe his
mother.
"Mother," said he, "I never knew Santa Claus chewed tobacco."
"Well, mebbe he was Santa Claus's hired man," said she.
"Might 'a' had the toothache," Paul suggested, for Lew Allen, who
worked for them in the summer time, had an habitual toothache,
relieved many times a day by chewing tobacco.
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