Dawn comes too early. The grandfather clock in the parlor was chiming loudly, announcing the sixth hour of the day. The day was December Twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve.
“That blasted clock,” mumbled Zachariah Weltworth as he rose from his warm, comfortable bed. It seemed like only minutes before he had pushed back the brocade coverlet and climbed into of bed.
The house was cold. His children were grown, and it had been years since he last saw them. His wife, Muriel, left him six years earl