bedtime hours were teaching him to be a hero.

It did not seem possible that an eight-year-old boy could be a
hero such as one reads of in books.

Of course, he was going to do great things when he was a man. He
meant to make a great fortune, of which half was to be his
mother's; and if she chose to spend it on churches and
missionaries and schools, so much the better.

He was sure she would rather do this than buy herself handsome
dresses and diamond rings and ruby necklaces; and he was quite
certain that, when she wore her gray gown and her gray bonnet,
with the purple violets tucked under the brim, that she was the
most beautiful lady in the world.

His own share of the fortune he planned to spend in many ways. He
promised himself, among other things, that he would put up a
fountain in the village, where tired people and thirsty horses and
cows and dogs and birds would come for a drink. "I'd have a text
on it too," he would say, with his eyes shining with excitement.
"It should be, 'I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.' And of
course 'I' would mean the Lord; for the Bible tells us how kind he
was to all helpless things, and I think he would be pleased to
have all the animals tended to as well as the thirsty people. I
wish I could be a man now, and they would not have to go thirsty
any longer."

He often told Almira Jane about the fountain too; and she always
said that it was a capital idea.