"If it _is_ Our Lord," I said to myself, "then surely I must give Him
something. If I go home now, so that mother comes and looks out and
sees me and tells me how the matter stands, He might be gone in the
meantime; and that would be disgraceful and ridiculous. I think it is
He beyond a doubt: the one whom the horseman met looked just like
that."
I went a few steps back and began to tear at my grey jacket. It was no
easy work: the coat fitted so tightly over my coarse linen shirt; and I
did not want to be puffing and panting, lest the beggar-man should
notice me too soon. I had a yellow-handled pocket-knife, brand-new and
just lately sharpened. I took it out of my pocket, put the little coat
under my knee and began to divide it down the middle.
It was soon done and I stole up to the beggar-man, who seemed to be
half asleep, and put his part of my coat on his head:
"Take this, my needy brother!" I said, silently, in my thoughts.
Then I put my half of the coat under my arm, gazed at Our Lord a little
longer and then drove the sheep from the walk.
"He is sure to come in the night," I thought, "and then father and
mother will see Him and, if He wishes to stop with us, we can fit up
the back room and the little altar for Him."
I lay in the cupboard-bedstead, beside father and mother, and I could
not sleep. The night passed and He Whom I was expecting did not come.
But, early in the morning, when the barn-door cock crowed the men and
maids out of their beds and when the noisy working-day began in the
yard outside, an old man--he was nicknamed Mushroom Moses--came to my
father, brought him the piece of my jacket which I had given away and
told how I had wantonly cut it the evening before and flung one half at
his head as he was taking a rest on the sheep-walk after hunting for
mushrooms.
Thereupon my father came up softly to my bed, with one hand hidden
behind his back.
"Look here, lad, just you tell me what you've done with your new Sunday
jacket!"
That soft slinking with his hand behind his back at once struck me as
suspicious; and my face fell; and, bursting into tears, I cried:
"Oh, father, I thought I was giving it to God!"
"Lord, lad, what a duffer--what an idiot you are!" cried my father.
"You're much too good for this world and yet quite too silly to die!
What you want is to have your soul thrashed out of your skin with a
stout besom."
And then, when the hand with the twisted birch-rod came in view, I
raised a great hullabaloo.
Mother came rushing up at once. As a rule, she seldom interfered when
father was correcting me; but, this time, she caught hold of his hand
and said:
"I dare say I can sew the jacket together again, father. Come with me:
I have something to tell you."
They both went out into the kitchen; I think they must have discussed
the story of St. Martin. Presently, they came back to the room.
Father said:
"All right now, be quiet; there's nothing going to be done to you."
And mother whispered in my ear:
"It's all right, your wanting to give your jacket to Our Lord; but
it'll be better still if we give it to the poor boy down in the valley.
Our Lord lies hidden in every poor man. St. Martin knew that too, you
see. So there. And now, lad, jump out of bed and get your breeches on;
father's not so very far off yet with that birch of his!"