Kerwick slowly rose from his chair. He placed both hands on Pollard’s shoulders, looked him full in the face, and said, “God bless you, Polly!” And then, the least bit huskily, he added, “Perhaps you’re right, after all. Perhaps it’s not too late.”
Pollard saw his old commander safely stowed away in the little box of a room that he was pleased to call his guest chamber, and then went about his preparations for the coming match. First, he put in order his rifle, and filled his thimble belt with half a hundred cartridges of his own careful loading. Then, after laying out his own uniform, he hunted through closet and wardrobe until he had got together a captain’s full outfit, which he placed upon a chair, just outside the door of Kerwick’s room.
For a moment he stood there listening. From within came the sound of deep, regular breathing. He softly turned the knob, and stepped into the room. Kerwick lay sound asleep, with his face turned towards the wall. Feeling like a full-fledged thief, Pollard laid hands upon the waistcoat which hung at the head of the bed, and then stealthily crept out of the room.
There was no watch in the waistcoat. Pollard opened a drawer of his desk, took out a plain silver timepiece—a relic of his school days—wound and set it, and slipped it into its proper pocket. He explored the other pockets. In one he found a ragged two dollar bill; in another, a stub of pencil and a card of common matches. That was all.
Tossing the vulgar brimstone matches into the fire, he went again to his desk and rummaged about until he found a silver match box—one of many that had come to him on birthdays and other times of the sort—which he filled with parlor matches and placed in the lower, left-hand pocket. Then he drew out a roll of bills, picked out three crisp fives, folded them up, once lengthwise and once across, with Kerwick’s poor, tattered banknote, and tucked the money snugly into the lower, right-hand pocket. And then he stole back into the captain’s room, and hung the garment in the place in which he had found it.
“Poor devil! He’s utterly done up,” he said to himself, as he left the room, after a last glance at his sleeping guest. “And no wonder! Well, there’s another Santa Claus tradition gone wrong! I haven’t put anything into the old chap’s socks. Never mind. The chances are that they’re too full of holes to make the filling of ’em a possibility.”
He went over to the mantel, filled a leather cigar case with Perfectos, and stowed it away in the inner pocket of the fatigue jacket which lay ready for Kerwick to don in the morning. This done, he stood thinking for a moment before the fire, and then, beginning rapidly to throw off his clothes, he muttered, “Yes, that will work. It’s sure to!” With which truly oracular remark he started off to bed.
Christmas day came in under a clear sky. Pollard rose at an early hour, went to the window for a hasty glance at the snowy world outside, and then rapped noisily at his friend’s door, singing out cheerily, “Hi! Kerwick. Time you were getting up.” And to hasten matters, he whistled the bars of Reveille, the lively call which, many a time, had brought them tumbling out from their blankets when under canvas with the Old Regiment.
Kerwick’s night of untroubled sleep had worked wonders. After a dip into the bath, and ten minutes’ careful work with the razor, he looked another man. And when at last, arrayed in captain’s uniform, he had inspected himself in Pollard’s mirror, he faced about, threw back his shoulders, and said with a healthy ring in his voice, “Polly, my son, I’ve been pretty far down, but I’ll live up to my old rank again—if only for today.”
“Did anybody ever see such a fit?” asked Pollard, gazing admiringly at the natty appearance of his friend. “Talk about being melted and poured into clothes! Why, that blouse looks as if it had been frescoed on you.”