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Know him! How should he know him? tall, and brawny, and whiskered, with pleasant blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks, and good nature streaming from his whole face! Him who, so many years ago,–a beardless youth–had run off to California after gold bubbles, and whom little good had been heard of when anything at all was heard of him. Know him? Of course he did not; but, as he sat down beside him on the settee and shook his old hand, David put his arms about his neck, and hung his head upon his bosom, and saw, in imagination, the thriftless boy of long ago whom he loved for all his waywardness.

Tom’s strong arms soon bore him to his old seat near the fire, and, for the first time, David’s wandering eye noticed the bower of green holly and red-berried mistletoe that decked the room. General Washington was loaded with it. The old clock, actually striking in a cheerier voice the hour of nine, had its full share. The dresser hid in festoons of it. Even David’s chair had its sprig. But what was that on the floor? An opened trunk, like a cloven pomegranate, displaying within rich trinkets that many a lady might covet?

“Wha–what’s it all mean, girls? Tell me, Little Scout,” said David, catching her hand. “What happened to me? I thought I came home–home to tell you Griffin threw me out in the snow, and called me a thief, and how all of them scowled and cried out at me, and I thought—-” then, looking at the tall man, he cried again,–

“Tom, is it so? Is it so, my dear boy?”

“Yes, father,” said Tom, slowly, to calm him, “it is, happily, all so.”

Then his little daughter, who had stood by his side through it all, kissed him, and said,–

“Come, father, look at the pretty presents Tom has brought us and you. See here’s a beautiful new coat hanging on your peg for you, and Molly and Polly are as gay as any ladies,” and she led him, tottering and feeble, to the loaded table–no longer ashamed of its defaced back beneath the pile of gifts it bore.

Then Mr. Tripple, hand in hand with the unresisting Polly, and Molly, and Tom, an unbroken circuit of cheery faces that electrified David Dubbs into a wrinkled smile in spite of lingering grief, clustered around the table and exclaimed aloud with admiration at the gifts Tom had brought.

But David, still overshadowed by the events of the afternoon, said, in a quivering voice,–

“But to-morrow, children, to-morrow! I am discharged by Griffin; we shall starve to-morrow!”

“Not while I’m about,” laughed Tom. “Come, come, be calm, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

And he did tell of the long years of hope and distress, of despair when unconsciously within reach of fortune; of its final realization and of its golden yield. “So here I am, father, and your old hand shall write no more for Emanuel Griffin.”

Then said Dolly, “You don’t speak, father; you are surely not sorry?”

Sorry! He was stifled with gratitude; he was transforming into his old self. The familiar tenderness of her voice opened the floodgates of his heart, and he burst into a louder “Hurrah” than over Griffin’s turkey, and kissed them all around, Mr. Tripple included, and, indeed, the day had been so successfully employed on the part of that gentleman that his early entrance into the family was far from problematical–so of course David did perfectly right.

Polly here broke in, “And, father, it was Tom who brought the note, and Tom who planned the surprise for you. What did it say, Tom? you can tell us now.”

He laughed quietly, and then said, as if he were reading impressively from the open sheet to Mr. Griffin himself, and making him writhe under his coolness,–

“Emanuel Griffin,

“Sir: The connection of my father, David Dubbs, Esq., with your counting-house, will cease from this day forth.

“Sir, your obedient servant,
“Thomas Dubbs.”

Told by an English Tourist.

“He seemed to be a kind of connecting link between the old times and the new, and to be, withal, a little antiquated in the taste of his accomplishments.”

Irving.