The young men looked at one another, some inclined to resent this, others with a ready sense of humour, burst out laughing; among these latter was Giles, who cried:
"Fairly caught, Governor Bradford! You have played a Christmas game this day yourself and have won out at it! For me, as a choice between staying close within the house and working, I will take to the stockade. By your leave, then, Governor, I will join you at the work, dinner being over."
"You have my leave, Giles Hopkins," said William Bradford, and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he turned them, with no smile on his lips, upon Giles.
Giles went home with Constance in perfect good humour, taking the end of his mischief in good part.
"For look you," he said, summing up comments upon it to his sister. "I don't mind encountering defeat by clever outwitting of me. We tried a scheme and the governor had a better one. What I mind is unfairness; that was fair, and I like the governor better than I ever did before."
Stephen Hopkins stood in the doorway of the house as the brother and sister came toward it. He was gazing at the skyline with eyes that saw nothing near to him, preoccupied, wistful, in a mood that was rare to him, and never betrayed to others. His eyes came back to earth slowly, and he looked at Giles and Constance as one looks who has difficulty in seeing realities, so occupied was he with his thoughts. He put out a hand and took one of Constance's hands, drawing it up close to his breast, and he laid his left hand heavily on Giles's shoulder.
"Across that ocean it is Christmas day," he said, slowly. "In England people are sitting around their hearths mulling ale, roasting apples, singing old songs and carols. When I was young your mother and I rode miles across a dim forest, she on her pillion, I guiding a mettlesome beauty. But she had no fear with my hand on his bridle; we had been married but since Michaelmas. We went to visit your grandmother, her mother, Lady Constantia, who was a famous toast in her youth. You are very like your mother, Constance; I have often told you this. Strange, that one can inhabit the same body in such different places in a lifetime; stranger that, still in the same body, he can be such an altered man! Giles, my son, I have been thinking long thoughts to-day. There is something that I must say to you as your due; nay something, rather, that I want to say to you. I have been wrong, my son. I have loved you so well that a defect in you annoyed me, and I have been hard, impatient, offending against the charity in judgment that we owe all men, surely most those who are our nearest and dearest. I accused you unjustly, and gave you no opportunity to explain. Giles, as man to man, and as a father who failed you, I beg your pardon."
