A Christmas Accident

The Giltons are next door neighbors to the Biltons. The houses are exactly alike and adjoin each other; the back yards are not even separated by a fence. Gilton is a crabbed old money-maker and childless, while his wife has grown submissive through years of continual nagging. The Biltons are a happy family of seven; poverty and scrimping have not soured them. The struggle to maintain his wife and the little ones has left Bilton threadbare, it is true, but the loving wife and five pairs of little arms that creep around his neck each morning and night are worth the fight. The fact that old Gilton fumes and fusses about the children sometimes stepping over the line of his back-yard bothers him only insofar as he dislikes discord. When Gilton's dog is poisoned, Bilton is as sorry as though it had been his own, yet old Gilton accuses him of being the poisoner. Even the heart-broken sobs of Cora Corrella, Bilton's sweet little daughter, over the death of her canine playfellow fail to convinc