With a wild jingle of bells that seemed to Dick the hysterical echo of
his own heartbeats the sleigh was off.




VI

The Colonel's Christmas




VI

At Brierwood the Colonel, wrought to a high tension of excitement by
the mysterious flood of Christmas prosperity, of which the latest
manifestation had been a fresh newspaper dated the night before,
surmounted by a cigar of no mean label, had been vainly searching for
Uncle Noah, bewildered by the darky's odd vagaries which had culminated
in the culprit's disappearance. Just as the Colonel had returned to
the library, drawn his favorite chair up to the cheerful blaze of the
wood fire, and opened his favorite volume, a door in the rear of the
house shut softly, and, convinced that Uncle Noah had returned, the
Colonel closed his book and adjusted his glasses, determined to have an
immediate reckoning with the author of all this Christmas cheer.

A light step sounded behind his chair, and the Colonel turned, quite
primed for an altercation. In an instant, however, the old man was on