The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Captured Santa Claus, by Thomas Nelson Page

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Title: A Captured Santa Claus

Author: Thomas Nelson Page

Illustrator: W. L. Jacobs

Release Date: September 7, 2010 [EBook #33666]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CAPTURED SANTA CLAUS ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Illustration: Cover art]

[Frontispiece: Over Evelyn he bent silently.]

A CAPTURED

SANTA CLAUS

BY

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

W. L. JACOBS

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK

1902

COPYRIGHT, 1891, 1902, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published, October, 1902

CONTENTS

I. CHRISTMAS AT HOLLY HILL
II. MAJOR STAFFORD COMES HOME
III. MAJOR STAFFORD GETS THE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
IV. THE BOYS LEARN SOMETHING OF WAR
V. THE SPY
VI. SANTA CLAUS PASSES THE LINES
VII. BOB SECURES A UNIFORM
VIII. SANTA CLAUS SURRENDERS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Over Evelyn he bent silently . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The Major's Christmas presents

Bob trotted around, keeping as far away from the camp-fires as possible

"I'm goin' to get my papa," said the tiny swordsman

A CAPTURED SANTA CLAUS

I

CHRISTMAS AT HOLLY HILL

Holly Hill was a place for Christmas! Holly Hill, the old rambling
Stratford homestead in Virginia, on its high hill, looking down the
long slope and across the wide fields to the far woods rimming the sky.
From Bob, the veteran, within a month of his teens, down to brown-eyed
Evelyn, with her golden hair floating all around her, when Christmas
came everyone hung up a stocking, and the visit of Santa Claus was the
event of the year.

They went to sleep the night before Christmas--or rather they went to
bed, for sleep was long far from their bright eyes--with delightful
expectations and thrills along their backs, and with little squeakings
and gurglings, like so many little white mice, and if Santa Claus had
not always been so very prompt in disappearing up the chimney before
daybreak he must certainly have been caught. For by the time the