Part 1

Produced by Al Haines

[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 chickens were crowing in the morning there would be an answering twitter through the house, and with a patter of little feet and subdued laughter small, white-clad figures would steal through the dim light of dusky rooms and cold passages, opening doors with sudden bursts, and shouting "Christmas gift!" into darkened chambers, at still sleeping elders. Then they would scurry away in the gray light to rake open the hickory embers and revel in the exploration of their bulging, overcrowded stockings. Not Columbus was to be envied when those discoveries were being made. What was a new world to those treasures! The thrill of the new jack-knife remains after forty years--it had four blades, each worth a province. Envy Columbus? Perish the thought!

Such was Christmas morning at Holly Hill in the old times before the war--those times of Memory and Romance.

Thus it was that at Christmas, 1863, when the blockading lines were drawn close and there were no new toys to be had for love or money, there were much disappointment and some murmurs at Holly Hill. The children had never really felt the war until then, though their father, Major Stafford, had been off, first with his company and then with his regiment, since April, 1861. War was on the whole a pleasant experience to the boys--so many strangers came by. Battles were so interesting, and there was a bare chance of their seeing one, in which Bob was to lead a charge and capture the commanding General.

But when Christmas came and there were no presents, no "real" presents, war was realized. It was a terrible thing. From Mrs. Stafford down to little tot Evelyn there was an absence of the merriment which Christmas always brought with it. The children's mother had done all she could to collect such presents as were within her reach, but the youngsters were much too sharp not to know that the presents were "just fixed up"; and when they were all gathered around the fire in their mother's chamber that Christmas morning, looking over their presents, their little faces wore an expression of pathetic disappointment.

"I don't think much of _this_ Christmas," announced freckled Ran, with characteristic gravity, looking down on his poor presents with an air of contempt. "A hatchet, a lot of old nails, and a hare-trap aren't much."

Mrs. Stafford smiled, but the smile soon died away into an expression of sadness.

"I too have to do without my Christmas gift," she said. "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 I saw him."

"You saw him!"

"Um--hm"--nodding her head cheerfully.

"Well! I knew she was an angel," said Major Stafford in an aside to his wife; "but--What did He say Santa Claus is going to bring you?" he asked.

The little mite sprang to her feet. "He's goin' to bring me--a--great--big--dolly--with real, sure-'nough hair, and blue eyes that will go to sleep, and her name's Miss Please-Ma'am." Her face was aglow, and she stretched her plump hands wide apart to give the size.

"She has dreamt it," said the Major in an undertone to her mother. "There is not such a doll as that in the Southern Confederacy."

The child caught his meaning. "Yes, He _is_," she insisted, "'cause I asked Him an' He said he would; and Charlie----"

Just then that youngster burst into the room, a small whirlwind in petticoats. As soon as his cyclonic tendencies could be curbed his father asked him:

"Well, what did you ask Santa Claus for, young man?"

"For a pair of breeches and a sword," answered the boy promptly, striking an attitude. "And I'm going to have 'em. I told Him I just had to have 'em."

"Well, upon my word!" laughed his father, eyeing the erect little figure and the steady, clear eyes which looked proudly up at him. "I had no idea what a young Achilles we had here. You shall have them."

The boy nodded gravely. "All right. When I get to be a man I won't let anybody make my mamma cry." He advanced a step, with head up, the very picture of spirit.

"Ah! you won't?" said his father, with a gesture to prevent his wife interrupting.

"Nor my little sister," said the young warrior, patronizingly, swelling with infantile importance.

"No; he won't let anybody make _me_ ky," chimed in Evelyn, promptly accepting the proffered protection. "And he won't make me ky himself."

"But you mus'n't be a cry-baby," demanded Charlie.

"On my word, Ellen, the fellow has some of the old blood in him," said Major Stafford, laughing, much pleased. "Come here, my young knight." He drew the boy up to him and stood him before him. "I had rather have heard you say that than have won a brigadier's wreath. You shall have your breeches and your sword next Christmas if I live. Were I the king I should give you your spurs. Remember, never let any one make your mother or sister cry."

Charlie nodded in token of his acceptance of the condition.

"All right. But she mus'n't be a crybaby," he added with a glance down at Evelyn.

III

MAJOR STAFFORD GETS THE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

When Major Stafford galloped away next day, on his return to his command, the little group at the lawn-gate shouted many messages after him. The last thing he heard was Charlie's treble, as he seated himself on the gate-post, calling to him not to forget to make Santa Claus bring him a pair of uniform breeches and a sword; and Evelyn's little voice came to him long after he could distinguish the words but he knew she was reminding him of her "dolly that can go to sleep."

Many times during the ensuing year, amid the hardships of the campaign, the privations and the fatigues of the march, and the dangers of battle, the Major heard those little voices calling to him.

In the autumn he won the three stars of a Colonel for gallantry in leading a desperate charge on a town in the heart of the enemy's land. A perilous raid had been made deep into the country. An overwhelming force had been met which defeated the object of the raid, and threatened the destruction of the entire force. The day was saved by Major Stafford. But none knew, when he dashed into the town at the head of his regiment, under a hail of bullets, that his mind was full of toyshops and clothing-stores, and that when he was so stoutly holding his position he was guarding a little boy's suit, a small sword with a gilded scabbard, and a large doll with flowing ringlets and blue eyes that could "go to sleep."

Some of his friends during that year charged the Major with growing miserly, and rallied him upon hoarding up his pay and carrying large rolls of Confederate money about his person; and when, just before the raid, he invested his entire year's pay in four or five ten-dollar gold-pieces, they vowed he was mad.

"I shall report him as a hopeless case," said Dr. Graham, the Surgeon. "A man might have reason to do this in time of peace; but when a man hoards money on his person and then exposes himself as the Major does every time we have a battle, it's proof of insanity."

The Major, however, always met these charges with a smile.

"Doctors are like other men," he said. "They think whatever they cannot understand, madness." And as soon as his position was assured in the captured town he proved his sanity.

The fight had been a sharp one, and the town had only been seized after a desperate charge. The shopkeepers had put up their shutters and were barricaded within their houses, while bullets were hailing and light field-pieces were cracking. At length it grew quiet.

The owner of a handsome store on the principal street, over which was a large sign, "Men's and Boys' Clothes," peeping out, saw a Confederate major ride up to the door, which had been hastily fastened when the fight began, and rap on it with the handle of his sword. There was something in the rap that was imperative, and the owner hastily opened the door. The officer entered.

"Good evening." He looked all about him. "Ah!" He picked up a little uniform suit of blue cloth with brass buttons.

"You have no gray ones?" he asked with a smile.

"No, sir. No use for 'em."

"What is the price of this?"

"Ten dollars," stammered the shopkeeper. "But you can have it for nothing if you will keep your men from troubling me."

To his astonishment, the Confederate officer put his hand in his pocket and laid a ten-dollar gold piece on the counter.

"Now show me where there is a toy-shop."

There was one only a few doors off, and the shopkeeper was most eager to show it. But the officer said he could find it. He went out.

The Major found and selected a boy's sword handsomely ornamented, and the most beautiful doll, over whose eyes stole the whitest of roseleaf eyelids, and which could talk as dolls talk, and do other wonderful things. He astonished this shopkeeper also by laying down another gold-piece. This left him but two or three more of the proceeds of his year's pay, and these he soon handed over a counter to a jeweller, who gave him a small package in exchange. He smiled and chatted so pleasantly with the men that when he left the shopkeepers all had new ideas of at least one "Rebel" officer.

All during the remainder of the campaign Colonel Stafford carried a package carefully sealed and strapped on behind his saddle. His care of it and his secrecy about it were the subjects of many jests among his friends in the brigade, and when in an engagement his horse was shot, and the Colonel, under a hot fire, stopped and calmly unbuckled his bundle, and during the rest of the fight carried it in his hand, there was a clamor afterward that he should disclose the contents. Even an offer to sing them a song would not appease his friends, though the Colonel had the best voice in the brigade. They must know his secret.

The brigade officers were gathered around a camp-fire that night on the edge of the bloody field. A Federal officer, Colonel Denby, who had been slightly wounded and captured in the fight, and who now sat somewhat grim and moody before the fire, was their guest.

"Now, Stafford, open the bundle and let us into the secret," they all said. "Some of us may get shot before we know it."

The Colonel, without a word, but with softened eyes, rose and, going to his saddle, which lay on the ground near by, brought the parcel to the fire. Kneeling down, he took out his knife and carefully opened the outer cover of oil-skin. Many a jest was levelled at him across the blazing logs as he did so. But a smile was on his face, and the Federal colonel thought to himself what a fine, high-bred face it was.

One said the Colonel had turned pedler, and was trying to eke out a living by running the blockade on Lilliputian principles; another wagered that he had it full of Confederate bills; a third, that it was a talisman against bullets, and so on. Within the outer covering were several others; but at length the last was reached. As the Colonel ripped carefully, the group gathered around and bent breathlessly over him, the light from the blazing camp-fire shining ruddily on their eager, weather-tanned faces. When the Colonel put in his hand and drew out a toy sword, there was a general exclamation. But when he took the doll from her soft wrapping, and then unrolled and held up a tiny jacket and a pair of little trousers not much larger than a man's hand, and just the size for a five-year-old boy, there was a dead silence and the men turned away their faces from the fire, and more than one who had boys of his own at home put his hand up to his eyes.

One of them, the bronzed and weather-beaten officer who had charged the Colonel with being a miser and who wore crepe on his sleeve, stretched himself out on the ground, flat on his face, and sobbed. As Colonel Stafford gently told his story of Charlie and Evelyn, even the grave face of Colonel Denby looked somewhat changed in the light of the fire, and he reached over for the doll.

"May I see it?"

"Certainly." A half dozen hands were stretched out to pass it to him. He handled it tenderly.

"I, too, have a little one at home," he said in a low voice, as he handed the doll back to Colonel Stafford. "The child of my only son. He was killed at Genies's Mill."

That night Colonel Stafford and Colonel Denby slept under the same blanket.

IV

THE BOYS LEARN SOMETHING OF WAR

During the whole year the children had been looking forward to the coming of Christmas. Charlie's outbursts of petulance and not rare fits of anger were invariably checked if any mention was made of his father's injunction to take care of his mother and little sister; and at length he became accustomed to curbing himself by the recollection of the charge he had received.

If he fell and hurt himself, even badly, in his constant attempts to climb up impossible places, he would simply snap his eyes and rub himself, and presently, say, proudly, "I don't cry now; I am a knight, and next Christmas I am going to be a man, 'cause my papa's goin' to tell Santa Claus to bring me a pair of breeches and a sword." Evelyn could not help crying when she was hurt, for she was only a very little girl; but she added to her prayer of "God bless and keep my papa, and bring him safe home," the petition, "Please, God, bless and keep Santa Tlaus, and let him come here Trismas."

Old Bob and Ran, too, as well as the younger ones, looked forward eagerly to Christmas. But this year brought the war much closer to Holly Hill. Heretofore it had been to the children, even to Bob, something dim and distant, like a cloud on the horizon, with grumblings of thunder and sheet-lightning that threatened but did not strike. But now it swept up to Holly Hill like a storm, then like a flood rolled over it. The main armies passed along the great road some way off, the Northern troops pushing on and on, nearer and nearer, until the big guns could be heard to the northward, making the ground tremble and the windows shake. At such times, Mrs. Stafford would stop and listen with white face and moving lips, and the older boys would stand beside her and count the reports in low tones, for they knew a great battle was being fought, and their father might be there. What would happen in case their side was beaten and had to fall back, they trembled to think. All the horses would be taken and the corn. That would mean starvation. And, perhaps, the house might be burnt. They had heard of such things elsewhere. And they might have to "refugee." This had its pleasant side for the boys, for they would have to travel south and, maybe, camp like gypsies or the "young marooners." Bob was full of excitement as to this, and used to thrill Ran, telling how they would live, and how they would mount guard at night, and evade their pursuers--or sometimes make a stand against them, on a hill, or at a stream, throwing up their breastworks and holding them back with his gun while their mother and "the children" escaped.

Then they would go out to the stable and, seated on a manger, talk it all over with Uncle Saunders, the carriage-driver, who was guide, philosopher, and friend to them. Uncle Saunders would sometimes be consoling and sometimes almost disappointing.

"They wer'n't goin' refugeein' like a parcel of gypsies." (Uncle Saunders' ideas of camping-out were not orthodox.) "But 'tain't no danger: no Yankees could git to them. If they could, they'd 'a' been long ago," reasoned Uncle Saunders. And if a few of "them pesky raiders slipt through and got there, he'd like to see 'em git his horses--he jist would. He knew a place he could hide 'em where they'd never find 'em. Gab'rull could hardly find 'em when he comes to blow his horn."

This, at least, was exciting, and Bob was all ears. He seized the old driver by the arm.

"Where is it, Uncle Saunders? You'll tell _me_? Please. I won't tell a soul--not even Ran. You know I won't if I promise."

But no; Uncle Saunders shut up like a clam--as tight as the high-barn door.

"Well, if I guess, will you tell me? Give me three guesses: all right? Is it the thick pines the other side of the creek where the old mine used to be?"

Uncle Saunders shook his head.

"Well, is it the big marsh with the high willows, and the old wagon-track?"

"You know, boy, I ain't goin' to teck my horses--my Black George and Blifil into dat mash!"

"Well--? (strung out very long). Is it--? Let me see--I've got only one more guess--haven't I?"

"I ain't give you nothin'," said Uncle Saunders, disappointingly. "You jist guessin' around heah."

But Bob insisted that by letting him guess twice he had agreed to the plan; and, in fact, it did look so.

"Well, go on, den," said Uncle Saunders at last.

Bob, after long thought, began again, guilefully watching Uncle Saunders' oracular face to read his success or failure by his expression. "Well--is it? No, it isn't that. Is it--the deep--? No; I don't want to ask that, I know it is not that--Is it the great woods?" (This with a jump.)

Old Saunders started to shake his head, and then looked around so guilefully to see that nobody was in ear-shot, that Bob dropped his voice to its most mysterious tone as he whispered, "Is that it?"

It may be doubted whether Uncle Saunders, for all his apparent confiding of his secret to Bob, was not playing a game with him, and merely letting him suppose he had guessed his secret refuge. But, however this was, and however clever he was at acting, Uncle Saunders was not clever enough to foretell the future. One morning, as Uncle Saunders was on his way to the stable, a party of men came galloping up the hill from toward the river, and in ten minutes all Uncle Saunders' plans were overthrown, and his horses, his cherished friends, were being led away amid his reproaches and the lamentations of the boys.

"Sam, you'll have to get up earlier in the morning than this to get ahead of us," laughed one of the men.

"Dat ain't my name," said Uncle Saunders, curtly.

"You think so much of your horses, you'd better come along and attend to them. We'll pay you wages and set you free." Uncle Saunders shook his head.

"Nor, I'm goin' to stay right heah and teck keer o' my mistis and de chillern.--My master told me to teck keer ov 'em while he was away, and I'm goin' to stay heah till he comes back."

"You'll stay here till the war's over, then," said the blue-coat. "Your master, as you call him, will not be back here till then. We are going on to Richmond."

"You won't get there," said Bob with spirit. "You've been trying to get there for over three years and haven't done it."

"No, little Johnny, we haven't yet, but we're still on the way," said the soldier.

By breakfast-time the plantation had been completely overrun; and all that day the blue-clad troops were passing by.