The friendship between an old man and a little child is always touching; they grow nearer together day by day, and the old Colonel and little Oliver soon appeared to understand each other, and to be as dependent on each other as if they had both been of the same age. The child, somewhat reserved with others, was bold enough with his grandfather. They held long discussions together over things that interested the boy; went sight-seeing in company to where the water ran over an old mill-wheel, or where a hen and her chickens lived in a neighbor's yard, or a litter of puppies gamboled under an outhouse, or a bird had her nest and little ones in a jasmine in an old garden, and Colonel Drayton told the boy wonderful stories of the world which was as unknown to him as the present world was to the Colonel.
So matters went, until the Christmas when the boy was seven years old.
V
Meantime, General Hampden was facing a new foe. His health had suddenly given way, and he was in danger of becoming blind. His doctor had given him his orders—orders which possibly he might not have taken had not the spectre of a lonely old man in total darkness begun to haunt him. He had been “working too hard,” the doctor told him.
“Working hard! Of course, I have been working hard!” snapped the General, fiercely, with his black eyes glowering. “What else have I to do but work? I shall always work hard.”
The doctor knew something of the General 's trouble. He had been a surgeon in the hospital where young Oliver Hampden had been when Lucy Drayton found him.
“You must stop,” he said, quietly. “You will not last long unless you do.”
“How long!” demanded the General, quite calmly.
“Oh! I cannot say that. Perhaps, a year—perhaps, less. You have burned your candle too fast.” He glanced at the other's unmoved face. “You need change. You ought to go South this winter.”