"No, I'll not cheat you, Benny,--never, any more."

"Where are you going, Charley?"

"Just out a bit," wrapping a plain shawl about her. "To find Christmas,
you know. For you--and me."

He pattered after her to the door.

"You'll come put me to bed, Charley dear? I'm so lonesome!"

"Yes, Bud. Kiss me. One,--two,--three times,--for God's good-luck."

He kissed her. And Lot went out into the wide, dark world,--into
Christmas night, to find a friend.

She came a few minutes later to a low frame-building, painted brown:
Adam Craig's house and shop. The little sitting-room had a light in it:
his wife would be there with the baby. Lot knew them well, though they
never had seen her. She had watched them through the window for hours in
winter nights. Some damned soul might have thus looked wistfully into
heaven: pitying herself, feeling more like God than the blessed within,
because she knew the pain in her heart, the struggle to do right, and
pitied it. She had a reason for the hungry pain in her blood when the
kind-faced old cobbler passed her. She was Nelly's child. She had come
West to find him.

"Never, that he should know _me_! never that! but for Benny's sake."

If Benny could have brought her to him, saying, "See, this is Charley,