imitated the manners of older men.

Just then they came to a little gate and the boy's manner changed.

"If you will wait, I will run around and put my bundle down. I am afraid
my grandfather might see it." He lowered his voice for the first time
since the General had introduced himself. Then he disappeared around the
house.

Oliver, having slipped in at the back door and carefully reconnoitred
the premises, tripped up stairs with his bundle to his mother's room. He
was so excited over his present that he failed to observe her confusion
at his sudden entrance, or her hasty hiding away of something on
which she was working. Colonel Drayton was not the only member of that
household that Christmas who was to receive a great-coat.

When Oliver had untied his bundle, nothing would serve but he must put
on the coat to show his mother how his grandfather would look in it. As
even with the sleeves rolled up and with his arms held out to keep it
from falling off him, the tails dragged for some distance on the
floor and only the top of his head was visible above the collar, the
resemblance was possibly not wholly exact. But it appeared to satisfy
the boy. He was showing how his grandfather walked, when he suddenly
recalled his new acquaintance.

"I met my other grandfather, on the street, mamma, and he came home with
me." He spoke quite naturally.

"Met your other grandfather!" Mrs. Hampden looked mystified.

"He says he is my grandfather, and he looks like papa. I reckon he 's my
other grandfather. He ran against me in the street and knocked me down,
and then came home with me."

"Came home with you!" repeated Mrs. Hampden, still in a maze, and with a
vague trouble dawning in her face.

"Yes 'm."

Oliver went over the meeting again.

His mother's face meantime showed the tumult of emotion that was
sweeping over her. Why had General Hampden come? What had he come for?
To try and take her boy from her?

At the thought her face and form took on something of the lioness that
guards her whelp. Then as the little boy repeated what his grandfather
had said of his reason for coming home with him, her face softened
again. She heard a voice saying, "If he ever sues for pardon, be
merciful to him for my sake." She remembered what day it was: the Eve
of the day of Peace and Good-will toward all men. He must have come for
Peace, and Peace it should be. She would not bring up her boy under the
shadow of that feud which had bli