feet shall touch the floor. It shall be commenced at once, and finished
before the winter term."

He bowed and sat down, white and perspiring at every pore, and hardly
knowing to what he had committed himself. The cheers were now a roar
which went echoing out into the night, and were heard nearly as far as
the village on the beach, the people wondering more and more at his
generosity, and sudden interest in their little ones. And no one
wondered more than himself. He did not care a picayune for children, nor
whether their feet touched the floor or not, and he had not intended
pledging himself to build the house when he began. But as he talked, the
palmetto clearing stared him in the face, shutting out everything from
his vision, except a long seat directly in front of him, on which
several little girls whose feet could not touch the ground were fast
asleep, their heads falling over upon each other, and the last one
resting upon the arm of the settee. It was a pretty picture, and stirred
in him feelings he had never experienced before. He would do something
for the children, expiatory, he said to himself, as he sat down,
thinking he ought to be the proudest and happiest of men to have the
town called for him, and to stand so high in the esteem of his fellow
citizens. What would they say if they knew what he did, and how cowardly
he was because of his pride. Sometime they must know. It could not be
otherwise, but he would put off the evil day as long as he could, and
when, at last, his guests began to leave, and he went down to bid them
good-night, his head was high with that air of patronage and superiority
natural to him, and which the people tolerated because he was Col.
Crompton.

That night he had a chill--the result of so much excitement to which he
was not accustomed, he said to Peter, who brought him a hot-water bag