A Captured Santa Claus

by Thomas Nelson Page

  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.

  It began to look after a little as if Bob's prediction were going to come true. The Union Armies did not reach Richmond. Their advance was stayed a few miles beyond Holly Hill. But Holly Hill and its family were well within the Federal lines, and there was no chance of being reached by any message or thing from the other side of the line. The roads, knee-deep in mud, were filled with troops in blue uniforms marching up and down, or with wagons passing backward and forward, piled high with boxes or forage. The children grew so used to them that they would go down to the roadside and watch them as they passed. The only Confederates the children ever saw now were the dejected prisoners who were being passed back on their way to prison. The only news they ever received was the rumors which reached them from Federal sources. Mrs. Stafford's heart was heavy within her, and when a day or two before Christmas she heard Charlie and Evelyn, as they sat before the fire, gravely talking of the long-expected presents which their father had promised that Santa Claus should bring them, she could stand it no longer. She took Bob and Ran into her room, and there told them that, now as it was impossible for their father to come, they must help her entertain "the children" and console them for their disappointment. The two boys responded heartily, as true boys always will when thrown on their manliness.

  "I knew he could not get here," said Ran.

  "I knew no one else could; but papa," said Bob, "but I hoped he might. He can do so many things no one else can do."

  Mrs. Stafford shook her head.

  For the next two days Mrs. Stafford and both the boys were busy. Mrs. Stafford, when Charlie was not present, gave her time to cutting out and making a little gray uniform-suit from an old coat her husband had worn when he first entered the army; while the boys employed themselves, Bob in making a pretty little sword and scabbard out of an old piece of gutter, and Ran, who had a wonderful turn for carving, in carving a doll from a piece of hard-seasoned wood.

  The day before Christmas the boys lost a little time in following and pitying a small lot of prisoners who passed along the road by the gate. They were always pitying the prisoners and planning means to rescue them, for they had an idea that they suffered a terrible fate. Only one certain case had come to their knowledge. A young man had one day been carried by the Holly Hill gate on his way to the head-quarters of the officer in command of that portion of the lines, General Denby. He was in citizen's clothes, which were muddy and torn, and he was charged with being a spy. The guards with him looked grim. His face was white, and yet he was a fierce-looking young fellow, speaking scornfully to his guards. Bob and Ran returned to the house, full of excitement, and spent some time that night planning how they might rescue him. Their plan included no less than the capture of General Denby himself. Bob mapp
ed it all out—how he would cross the creek, dodging the picket at the bridge, slip past the sentries, and walking into the farm-house where the General had his headquarters, would seize him and force him to write a release of the prisoner.

  The next morning, Ran, who had risen early to visit his hare-traps, rushed into his mother's room, white-faced and wide-eyed. "Oh! mamma!" he gasped, "they have hung him, just because he had on those clothes. Uncle Saunders heard all about it."

  Mrs. Stafford, though she was much moved herself, endeavored to explain to the boy that this was one of the laws of war, but Ran's mind was not able to comprehend the principles which imposed so cruel a sentence for what he deemed so harmless a fault.

  "It's that old General Denby!" he exclaimed, hotly. "Even his own soldiers say he works them to death. I wish somebody would capture him."

  This act and some other measures of severity gave General Denby a reputation for much harshness among the few old residents who yet remained at their homes within the lines, and the boys used to gaze at him furtively as he would ride by, grim and stern, followed by his staff. Yet there were those who said that General Denby's rigor was simply the result of a high standard of duty, and that at bottom he had a soft heart.

  The children, however, could never bear to think of him, and when he would pass along with his staff, as he sometimes did, while they were watching beside the road, and would look at them with something very like a smile in his eyes, they would turn their heads away for fear he would speak to them.

  V - The Spy

  The approach of Christmas was marked even in the Federal camps, and many a song and ringing laugh were heard around the camp-fires glowing along the hills and in the tents and little cabins used as winter-quarters, over the boxes which were pouring in from home.

  The troops in the camps near General Denby's head-quarters on Christmas Eve had been larking and frolicking all day like so many boys, preparing for the festivities of the evening, when they proposed to have a great entertainment; and the General, as he sat in the smoky front room in the old farm-house used as his head-quarters, writing official papers, had more than once during the afternoon half-frowned at the noise and shouting outside. It disturbed him. A holiday occasion was not the easiest time for a general in command, especially when the enemy lay in force scarcely five miles away. The men were apt to think that at such a time discipline should be relaxed, and they be allowed to take it easy. And such an occasion was just the moment when his opponent, a general as watchful as he was able, was likely to make an attack. News had reached him through his scouts that such an attack was probable. Moreover, the General had been working all day answering despatches from men in Washington, telling him to do things that were either impossible or had been done long ago. And, to crown it all, the chimney smoked badly.

  At length, however, late in the afternoon, he finished his work, and having dismissed his Adjutant, he locked the door, and pushing aside all his business papers, took from his pocket a little letter and began to read.

  As he read, the stern lines of the grim soldier's face relaxed, and more than once a smile stole into his eyes and stirred the corners of his grizzled mustache.

  The letter was scrawled in a large, childish hand, and many of the words were interlined. It ran:

  "MY DEAREST GRANDPAPA: I want to see you very much. I send you a Christmas gift. I made it all myself. I hope to get a whole lot of dolls and other presents. I love you. I send you all these kisses ************. You must kiss them every one. Don't I write well?

  "Your loving little granddaughter,

  "LILY."

  When he had finished reading, the old veteran gravely lifted the letter to his lips and pressed a kiss on each of the little spaces, so carefully drawn by the childish hand.

  This done, he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose violently as he walked up and down the room. He even muttered something about "the fire smoking." Then he sat down once more at his table, and, placing the little letter before him, began to write. As he wrote, the fire smoked more than ever, and the sounds of revelry outside reached him in a perfect uproar; but he no longer frowned, and when the strains of "Dixie" came in faintly at the window, sung in a clear, rich, mellow solo, though for a moment he looked surprised, he sat back in his chair and listened.

  "I wish I were in Dixie, away, away;

  In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,

  To live and die for Dixie land,

  Away, away, away down South in Dixie!"

  sang the voice, full and sonorous.

  When the song ended, there was an outburst of applause, and shouts apparently demanding some other song, which was refused, for the noise grew to a tumult. The General rose and walked to the window. A large crowd had gathered about a campfire not far from his window, and in the midst, lifted up on a box, and clearly outlined against the firelight stood the singer, a tall, straight man with a long beard and civilian's clothes. Suddenly the uproar hushed, for the voice began again. But this time it was a hymn:

  "While shepherds watched their flocks by night,

  All seated on the ground,

  The Angel of the Lord came down,

  And glory shone around."

  Verse after verse was sung, the men pouring out of their tents and huts to listen to the music.

  "All glory be to God on high,

  And to the earth be peace;

  Good will henceforth from Heaven to men

  Begin and never cease!"

  "Begin and never cease," sang the singer to the end.

  When the strain died away, there was dead silence for a little space, and then the talk began on a lower key.

  The General stood for a moment, then turned from the window, finished his letter and sealed it. Carefully folding up the little sheet which lay before him, he replaced it in his pocket, and, going to the door, summoned the orderly who was just without.

  "Mail that at once," he said.

  "Yes, sir." The soldier saluted and turned to leave.

  "By the way, who was that singing out there just now?—I mean that last one, who sang 'Dixie' and the hymn?"

  "Only a pedler, sir, I believe."

  The General's eyes fixed themselves on the soldier.

  "Where did he come from?"

  "I don't know, sir. Some of the boys had him singing."

  "Tell Major Dayle to come here immediately," said the General.

  In a moment the officer summoned entered, a stout, round-faced man, who looked as if he took the world easy. He appeared somewhat embarrassed.

  "Who was this pedler?" asked the commander.

  "I—I don't know——" began the other.

  "You don't know! Where did he come from?"

  "From Colonel Watchley's camp—directly," said he, relieved to shift a part of the responsibility.

  "How was he dressed?"

  "In citizen's clothes."

  "What did he have?"

  "A pack—a few toys, and trinkets, and books."

  "What was his name?"

  "I did not hear it."

  "And you let him go!" The General's eyes snapped.

  "Yes, sir; I don't think——" he began.

  "No, I know you don't," said the General. "Have I not given strict orders? He was a spy. Where has he gone?"

  "I—I don't know. He cannot have gone far."

  "Report yourself under arrest," said the commander, sternly.

  The officer, after waiting a moment, walked off scowling. Walking to the door, the General said to the sentinel:

  "Call the corporal, and tell him to request Captain Albert to come here immediately."

  In a moment an alert, vigorous-looking young officer came up, and the General gave him an order.

  "He must be found and not allowed to escape," he said in closing.

  "Yes, sir: I'll find him," he said, as he hurried off.

  Ten minutes later a small body of horsemen rode rapidly out of camp in the direction the pedler had taken. The pic
ket at the bridge across the little stream below the camp had seen nothing of the pedler, and the men separated and began to visit the camps stretched along the slopes above the stream.

  An hour or two later Captain Albert reported that he had traced the spy to a place just over the creek, where he was believed to be harbored. He wanted more men to surround the house.

  "Take a detail and arrest him, or burn the house," ordered the General, angrily. "It is a perfect nest of treason—even the slaves are rebels!" he said to himself, as he walked up and down, as though in justification of his savage order. He put his hand in his pocket. It struck a little square envelope.