Far off,  unheard by anyone, was a faint little noise, like the ringing of tiny silver bells.

     Glingleglingleglingle...

     And someone landed abruptly in a  snowdrift  and said, 'Bugger!', which is a terrible thing to say as your first word ever.

     Overhead, heedless of the new and somewhat angry life that was even now dusting itself off, the sledge soared onwards through time and space.

     I'M FINDING THE BEARD A BIT OF A TRIAL, said Death.

     'Why've  you  got  to have the beard?' said the  voice  from among  the sacks. 'I thought you said people see what they expect to see.'

     CHILDREN DON'T. TOO OFTEN THEY SEE WHAT'S THERE.

     'Well, at least it's keeping you in the right frame of mind, master. In character, sort of thing.'

     BUT GOING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? WHERE'S  THE SENSE IN THAT? I CAN JUST WALK THROUGH THE WALLS.

     'Walking  through the walls is not right, neither,' said the voice from the sacks.

IT WORKS FOR ME.

     'It's got to be chimneys. Same as the beard, really.'

     A head  thrust itself out  from the pile.  It appeared to belong to the oldest,  most  unpleasant  pixie  in  the  universe.  The  fact that it  was underneath a jolly little green hat with a bell on it did not do anything to improve matters.

     It waved a crabbed hand containing a thick wad of letters, many of them on pastel-coloured paper, often with  bunnies and teddy  bears on  them, and written mostly in crayon.

     'You reckon  these little buggers'd be  writing  to  someone who walked through walls?' it said. 'And the "Ho, ho, ho" could use  some more work, if you don't mind my saying so.'

HO. HO. HO.

     'No, no, no!' said Albert. 'You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offence intended. It's got to be  a big fat laugh. You got to ... you got to sound  like you're pissing brandy and crapping  plum pudding, sir, excuse my Klatchian.'

REALLY? HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS?

     'I was young once, sir. Hung up my stocking like a good boy every year. For to get it filled with toys, just like you're doing. Mind you, in those days  basically  it was sausages and  black puddings if  you were lucky. But  you always got a pink sugar piglet in the toe.  It wasn't a good Hogswatch unless you'd eaten so much you were sick as a pig, master.'

     Death looked at the sacks.

     It was a strange but demonstrable fact that  the  sacks of toys carried by the Hogfather,  no matter  what they really contained, always appeared to have sticking out  of the  top a teddy bear, a  toy  soldier in  the kind of colourful  uniform that  would  stand  out in a disco,  a  drum and  a  red-and-white candy cane.  The actual contents always turned out to be something a bit garish and costing $5.99.

     Death had investigated one or two. There had been a Real Agatean Ninja, for  example, with Fearsome  Death Grip, and a Captain Carrot One-Man  Night Watch with a complete wardrobe of toy weapons, each of which cost as much as the original wooden doll in the first place.

     Mind you, the stuff for the girls was just as depressing. It seemed  to be  nearly  all  horses. Most of them  were  grinning.  Horses, Death  felt, shouldn't grin- Any horse that was grinning was planning something.

     He sighed again.

     Then  there  was this business  of deciding who'd been naughty or nice. He'd never had to think about that sort of thing before. Naughty or nice, it was ultimately all the same.

     Still, it had to be done right. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

     The pigs pulled up alongside another chimney.

     'Here we are, here we are,' said Albert. 'James Riddle, aged eight.'

     HAH, YES. HE ACTUALLY SAYS IN  HIS LETTER,  'I BET YOU DON'T EXIST 'COS EVERYONE  KNOWS  ITS  YORE  PARENTS.' OH  YES, said Death,  with what almost sounded like sarcasm, I'M SURE HIS  PARENTS ARE JUST IMPATIENT TO BANG THEIR ELBOWS IN TWELVE FEET OF  NARROW  UNSWEPT  CHIMNEY, I  DON'T THINK.  I SHALL TREAD EXTRA SOOT INTO HIS CARPET.

     'Right, sir. Good thinking. Speaking of which - down you go, sir.'

     HOW  ABOUT  IF  I  DON'T  GIVE HIM  ANYTHING  AS A PUNISHMENT  FOR  NOT BELIEVING?

     'Yeah, but what's that going to prove?'

     Death sighed. I SUPPOSE YOU'RE RIGHT.

     'Did you check the list?'

     YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?

     'Definitely.'

     COULDN'T REALLY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. HOW CAN I TELL IF HE'S BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE, FOR EXAMPLE?

     'Oh, well ... I don't know ... Has he hung his clothes up, that sort of thing. '

AND IF HE HAS BEEN GOOD I MAY GIVE HIM THIS KLATCHIAN WAR  CHARIOT WITH REAL SPINNING SWORD BLADES?

     'That's right.'

     AND IF HE'S BEEN BAD?

     Albert scratched his  head. 'When I was a lad, you got a bag  of bones. 's'mazing how kids got better behaved towards the end of the year.'

OH DEAR. AND NOW?

     Albert  held  a package up  to  his ear  and rustled  it. 'Sounds  like socks.'

SOCKS.

     'Could be a woolly vest.'

SERVE HIM RIGHT, IF I MAY VENTURE TO EXPRESS AN OPINION...

     Albert: looked across the snowy rooftops and sighed. This wasn't right. He was helping because, well, Death was his master and that's all  there was to it, and if the master had a heart it would be in the right place. But...

     'Are you sure we ought to be doing this, master?'

     Death stopped, halfway out of the chimney.

CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER ALTERNATIVE, ALBERT?

     And that was it. Albert couldn't.

     Someone had to do it.

     There were bears on the street again.

     Susan ignored them and didn't even make a point of not treading  on the cracks.

     They just stood around, looking a bit puzzled and slightly transparent, visible only to children and  Susan. News  like Susan gets around. The bears had heard  about  the poker. Nuts  and berries,  their expressions seemed to say. That's what  we're here for.  Big sharp teeth? What big  shar--- Oh, these big sharp  teeth? They're just for, er, cracking nuts. And some of these berries can be really vicious.

     The city's clocks were striking six when she got back to the house. She was allowed her own key. It wasn't as if she was a servant, exactly.

     You couldn't be  a duchess and a servant. But it  was all right to be a governess.  It was  understood that it wasn't exactly what you  were, it was merely a way of  passing the time until you did what every girl, or gel, was supposed to do  in life, i.e., marry some  man.  It  was understood that you were playing.

     The parents were in awe of her. She was the daughter of a  duke whereas Mr  Gaiter was a man to be reckoned with  in  the wholesale boots and  shoes business.  Mrs  Gaiter was bucking for  a transfer  into the  Upper Classes, which  she currently  hoped to  achieve  by reading books on etiquette.  She treated Susan  with  the kind  of worried deference she  thought  was due to anyone  who'd  known the difference between  a serviette and a  napkin  from birth.

     Susan had  never before  come  across the idea that you  could rise  in Society by, as it  were,  gaining marks,  especially since  such noblemen as she'd met in her father's house had used neither serviette  nor napkin but a state of mind, which was 'Drop it on the floor, the dogs'll eat it.'

     When Mrs Gaiter had tremulously  asked her how one addressed the second cousin of a queen,

     Susan had replied without thinking, 'We called him Jamie, usually,' and Mrs Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room.

     Mr Gaiter just nodded when he met her in a passage and never said  very much to  her. He was pretty sure he knew where he stood  in  boots and shoes and that was that.