rreling over the War! Dick, you deserved to be spanked."

The jingle of sleigh-bells rang blithely through the silence that
followed, and the Major sprang to his feet. "Merciful Heavens!" he
exclaimed, staring at his watch, "it's twelve o'clock. That must be
Uncle Neb still waiting, and Grandmother Verney's probably standing on
the church porch yet, mad as a hornet." He was at the door now,
calling wildly to the negro: "Uncle Neb, why under the canopy didn't
you call me?"

The darky scratched his head. "Massa Edward," he confessed, "I ain't
been yere. I jus' druv Missy Ruth over to Brierwood with Uncle Noah to
see Colonel Fairfax."

The Major summoned Dick in great excitement. "Dick," he exclaimed,
"get into your overcoat as fast as you can and drive over to Brierwood
with Uncle Neb. Ruth's gone ahead of you, and you couldn't have a
better deputy short of an angel."

Dick wrung the Major's hand and fled to the waiting sleigh, the color
flooding his face.

"And, Uncle Neb," called the Major frantically, "hurry back, or
Grandmother Verney will be tramping home in the snow, rheumatism or no
rheumatism."

With a wild jingle of bells that seemed to Dick the hysterical echo of
his own heartbeats the sleigh was off.

VI

The Colonel's Christmas

VI

At Brierwood the Colonel, wrought to a high tension of excitement by
the mysterious flood of Christmas prosperity, of which the latest
manifestation had been a fresh newspaper dated the night before,
surmounted by a cigar of no mean label, had been vainly searching for
Uncle Noah, bewildered by the darky's odd vagaries which had culminated
in the culprit's disappearance. Just as the Colonel had returned to
the library, drawn his favorite chair up to the cheerful blaze of the
wood fire, and opened his favorite volume, a door in the rear of the
house shut softly, and, convinced that Uncle Noah had returned, the
Colonel closed his book and adjusted his glasses, determined to have an
immediate reckoning with the author of all this Christmas cheer.

A light step sounded behind his chair, and the Colonel turned, quite
primed for an altercation. In an instant, however, the old man was on
his feet, bowing grandly in spite of his astonishment. A girl stood in
the doorway, her cloak falling loosely about her figure. Her cheeks
were blazing scarlet from the cold, and the deep gray eyes, fringed in
black, bore something in their warm depths that stirred f