cheap that his scant hoard would buy it. At last he succeeded in getting
a little box of tin soldiers of poorest quality for one-third less than
the price put on it It was one of the few times in his life when he
found himself able to haggle over the cost of a thing.

From the first he found fault with the new addition to his army, and one
day not long afterwards he charged the whole regiment with cowardice in
the face of the enemy. A drumhead court martial was held on the spot,
and the verdict was a foregone conclusion. The culprits were found
guilty in a body and sentenced to immediate execution. Then Keith
possessed himself surreptitiously of the family hammer, and when his
mother came to investigate the noise he was making the whole offensive
regiment had been reduced to scraps. Never before or after did Keith as
a general go to such extremes on behalf of military morale.

But many, many years later, when he stopped for the first time at a
typical English hotel, he found himself horribly embarrassed by the
assistance forced on him by the obligatory valet.



III

In Sweden the principal celebration with its distribution of gifts takes
place late on Christmas Eve.

Long before that day Keith began to watch every package brought into the
house. Soon he noticed several that disappeared quickly without having
been opened. Nor did it take his shrewd little mind long to figure out
that they must have been stowed away on the upper shelf of the pantry