By the banks of the river hares were creeping, and complaining bitterly of the cold. "Ah!" said they, "if we could but find a warm hole to creep into, or if we had but thick, curly coats, like the bears!"
"Do you think I have a warm coat to give any one?" quoth Captain Jack, and he breathed on their long whiskers, which now stood quite stiffly. "Oh hute-tute-tute-tu!" cried they, hopping up and down with pain; "oh my toes! my poor toes!"
Captain Jack also danced with merriment; he had neither soul nor feeling, and couldn't understand being sorry for any one.
Over the river, the lights of the town were gleaming. They shone like stars that had stooped a little lower from heaven. Captain Jack skipped lightly across the waves rolling so softly from shore to shore, and as he passed, the water smoothed out under his feet; it was as though some one had placed upon it a thin sheet of glass.
He ran through the silent streets of the town, where all the world had gone to sleep, and peered in at many casements. Sometimes he beheld the good folks dreaming, with the hard, ugly frown still on their faces which they had worn when they were awake; and then he slipped into the room--yes, a key hole was large enough for him to creep through if he chose! and breathed upon them so, that they shivered in their beds, in spite of the warm eider down they had tucked around them. "The window was open on a crack," they would say on the following day; but it needed not a crack for Captain Jack to enter if he thought they deserved it!
In other chambers he beheld lovely little children, with the faces of angels; or venerable grandsires; with their snowy hair floating over the pillow, and then he drew the most beautiful pictures on the window pane, to amuse them when they should wake. He crept slyly into the larders of thrifty housewives, and, with a touch, made chickens and ducks hanging there, quite stiff and tasteless; he skipped to the cistern, and magically rendered the pump handle immovable; he ran about the streets and played tricks with the bright gas lamps, and they went out, as though a puff of wind had blown over them. And, last of all, he ran against a stout Burgomaster, returning homeward from a merry supper, and so pinched the end of his red bottle-nose, that it tingled again!