Both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine bore all the marks of race, and Lyddon had often wondered where Archie, the youngest child by ten years of the sons of the house, could have inherited his merry, inconsequential snub nose, his round face like a young English squireling, and his frankly red hair. He had neither the beauty nor the intellect of his older brothers, Neville, the young army officer, and Richard, who after taking high honors at the university was just graduated in law; but for sweetness, courage, and an odd sort of humor, Lyddon reckoned Archie not inferior to any boy he had ever taught. He was his parents’ Benjamin, the afterclap which had come to them almost in their old age, and was in some sort different to them from their older sons. He was to be classed rather with Angela Vaughn, the baby girl whom, in her infancy, Mrs. Tremaine had taken because the child was an orphan and the stepchild of a remote cousin. Angela and Archie had grown up together, a second crop, as the colonel explained, and they would ever be but children to both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. At that moment, Archie, with Jim Henry and Tasso to assist, mounted on a table, to finish the hanging of the Christmas wreaths, that the old hall might look its best when Neville, his mother’s darling, and Richard, her pride, should arrive for the Christmas time. Neville had succeeded in getting a few days’ leave from his regiment, and Richard, the most intimate of brothers, had himself driven to the river landing to meet Neville. They might arrive at any moment and would be certain to be chilled with the ten miles’ drive in the winter afternoon, and there was not a drop of liquor of any sort to give them, according to the universal custom of the time. Hector, having helped himself to a little fine old brandy left in Colonel Tremaine’s private liquor case, was quite oblivious of what he had done with the keys both of the cellar and sideboard, and was struggling to explain this to Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. “I ’clare ’fore Gord, Mist’iss--” he protested with solemn emphasis as Lyddon came up to the fireplace. “Come, Hector,” answered Mrs. Tremaine, in a voice of quiet authority, “don’t take the name of the Almighty in that trifling manner. What have you done with the cellar keys?” “Mist’iss, I ’clare ’fore Gord----” “My love,” interrupted Colonel Tremaine anxiously, addressing Mrs. Tremaine, “perhaps a little persuasion might discover the truth.” The colonel, although he swore liberally at Hector himself, never relished any fault-finding with him by anyone else, even Mrs. Tremaine. Hector, knowing by an experience of more than sixty years that he had a devoted ally in Colonel Tremaine, announced with easy confidence: “I recommember now what I done wid dem keys. I give dem cellar keys to old Marse, an’ I give him dem sidebo’d keys----”