seldom let out of her
sight. During the day she kept it round her, saying, "Me's cold," and at
night she had it near her bed where she could see it the first thing in
the morning.

The Colonel knew the town was full of speculation and surmises, but he
did not care. Surmises which went wide of the mark were better than the
real truth would have been, and that he could not tell. He had left a
large part of his past in Florida, and trusted it would not follow him.
He could not leave the little girl, and he meant to do his duty by her,
outwardly at least. He had no love for her, and could not manufacture
one. He would rather she had never been born; but inasmuch as she was
born, and was very much alive, she must be cared for.

There was a private baptism in his library one Sunday afternoon, and she
was christened Amy Eudora. Amy was for his mother; Eudora for no one
knew whom, except Peter, who thought of the smelly letter, and knew
that Eudora was for the young mother, dead somewhere in Florida. But he
held his tongue, and tried to make up to the little girl her loss of
Shaky, for whom she cried for days. Then, as she grew accustomed to her
surroundings, she became contented, and her merry chatter filled the
house from morning till night. Every one was devoted to her, except the
Colonel. He was kind, but never encouraged her advances; never kissed
her, never took her in his lap, or allowed her in his library. She
called him father, and he answered to the name, while she was Eudora
Harris to others. He tried at first to call her Amy, but she stoutly
resisted.

"Me's Dory. Shaky and Mandy Ann calls me Dory," she would say, with a
stamp of her foot, refusing to answer to any name but Dory, which came
at last to be Dora as she grew older.

She learned to read in the new school-house by the south gate of the
park, and when she heard that the Colonel built it, she called it hers,
and queened it over her companions with an imperiousness worthy of the
Colonel himself. When questioned of her old home her answers were vague.
There was a river somewhere, and her mother was sick, and she reckoned
she had no father but Shaky.

As she grew older, she became very reticent of her past, and, if she
remembered it at all, she held her tongue, like Peter. Once, when she
was more than usually aggressive, claiming not only the school-house but
everything in and around it, she was told by the children that she lived
with niggers till she