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“Oliver,” he said, gravely, leaning down over the boy and putting his hand on him gently, “there has been a great mistake. I am going home with you to your mother and tell her so. I want to see her and your grandfather, and I think I can explain everything.”

The child turned and gazed at him seriously, and then his face relaxed. He recognized his deep sincerity.

“All right.” He turned and walked down the street, bending under his burden. The General offered to carry it for him, but he declined.

“I can carry it,” was the only answer he made except once when, as the General rather insisted, he said firmly, “I want to carry it myself,” and tottered on.

A silence fell on them for a moment. A young man passing them spoke to the child cheerily.

“Hullo, Oliver! A Christmas present?–That ‘s a great boy,” he said, in sheer friendliness to the General, and passed on. The boy was evidently well known.

Oliver nodded; then feeling that some civility was due on his part to his companion, he said briefly, “That ‘s a friend of mine.”

“Evidently.”

The General, even in his perplexity, smiled at the quaint way the child 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 blighted both sides of his race so long.

“Oliver,” she said, “you must go down and let him in. Say I will come down.”