When everybody was gone, Fortescue gave the Colonel an arm up the wide staircase to his old room, and Betty was on the other side of him, while Kettle brought up the rear with the Colonel's stick, while Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar awaited the procession in the bedroom. Once in the room, the Colonel looked around him in amazement. There was his bed in the corner where it had stood for so many decades, and his shaving table at the same angle, his arm-chair was drawn up to the blazing fire as if it had never left the spot, and over the mantelpiece hung his sword in its old place. The quaint old daguerrotypes were open on the mantelpiece, and everything was just as it had been until three years before. The Colonel, a little pale, dropped into the chair. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked. "It means," said Betty, leaning over him in her shimmering evening gown and with diamonds shining in her hair--"it means that you are not to go away any more. Jack sent four men and a cart over to Holly Lodge the minute you left, and all these things were brought up the back stairs, and Aunt Tulip arranged them. And Uncle Cesar is to undress you and put you to bed, and you are to throw the bootjack at him when you get angry, just as you used to do. For Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar are coming here to live, too, and Kettle is to be your aide-de-camp, and Holly Lodge is to be shut up. It is a horrid little hole, anyhow." Now, as Betty had sworn and declared and protested many times over upon her honor as a lady and her faith as a Christian that Holly Lodge was a most delightful little place, the Colonel was much shocked at her moral turpitude, but Betty excused herself by saying: "Of course it seemed well enough as long as you and I were there together, but it must be a horrid little hole without me." The Colonel submitted, as the old do, and his submission was very much accelerated by Fortescue saying promptly: "Now, Colonel, I am the commanding officer at Rosehill, and you will not be permitted to return to Holly Lodge, except under guard or on your parole." When the house was quiet, and Uncle Cesar had put the Colonel to bed, as in the days long past, the old soldier lay quiet and wakeful in his high-post bed, watching through the chinks of the shutters the dawning of the bright Christmas day. His heart was at peace. "It is but for a little while," he said to himself.