"Your father
wrote me that he hoped to spend Christmas with us, and he has not come.
He has been ordered over to the Potomac."

"Never mind; he may come yet," said Bob encouragingly. "He always does
what he says he's going to do." (Bob always was encouraging. That was
why he was "Old Bob.") "An axe was just the thing I wanted, mamma,"
said he, shouldering his new possession proudly and striking the
attitude of a woodman striding off. "Now I can make an abatis."

Mrs. Stafford's face lit up again. He was a sturdy boy, with wide-open
eyes and a good mouth.

"And a hatchet was what I wanted," admitted Ran, affected by the
example. "Besides, there are a lot of nails--now I can make my own
hare-traps."

"An' I like a broked knife," asserted Charlie, stoutly, falling
valiantly into the general movement, while Evelyn pushed her long hair
out of her eyes, and hugged her patched-up baby, declaring:

"I love my dolly, and I love Santa Tlaus, an' I love my papa," at which
her mother took the little midget to her bosom, broken doll and all,
and hid her face in her tangled curls.

II

MAJOR STAFFORD COMES HOME

The end of that Christmas was better than the beginning. Major
Stafford justified Bob's confidence. The holiday was not quite over
when one evening Major Stafford galloped up to the gate through the
mist, his black horse, Ajax, splashed with mud to his ear-tips. He had
ridden him seventy miles that day to keep that tryst. The Major soon
heard all about the little ones' disappointment at not receiving any
new presents.

"Santa Tlaus didn' tum this Trismas, but he's tummin' _next_ Trismas,"
said Evelyn, looking wisely up at him, that evening, from the rug,
where she was vainly trying to make her doll's head stick on her broken
shoulders.

"And why did he not come this Christmas, Miss Wisdom?" laughed her
father, touching her caressingly with the toe of his boot.

"Tause the Yankees wouldn't let him," said she, gravely, holding her
doll up and looking at it pensively, her head on one side.

"And why, then, should he come next year?"

"Taus God's goin' to make him." She turned the mutilated baby around
and examined it gravely, with her shining head still set on the other
side.

"There's faith for you," said Mrs. Stafford.

Her husband asked the child:

"How do you know this?"

"Tause God told me," answered Evelyn, still busy with her inspection.

"He did? When?"

"'Tother night when