He paused at the bottom of the stair, backed the paper on the wall, and wrote under the words setting forth the farmer's destitution, "Martin Culpepper--twenty-five dollars." He stood a moment in the stairway looking into the street; the day was fair and beautiful; the grasshoppers were gone, and with them went all the vegetation in the landscape; but the colonel in his nankeen trousers and his plaited white shirt and white suspenders, under his white Panama hat, felt only the influence of the genial air.

So he drew out the subscription paper again and erased the twenty-five dollars and put down thirty-five dollars.

Then as Oscar Fernald and Daniel Frye came by with long faces the colonel hailed them.
"Boys," he said, "fellow named Haskins down in Fairview, with nine children and a sick wife, got burnt out last night, and I'm kind of seeing if we can't get him some lumber and groceries and things.

I want you boys," the colonel saw the clouds gathering and smiled to brush them away, "yes, I want you boys to give me ten dollars apiece." "Ten dollars!" cried Fernald.
"Ten dollars!" echoed Frye.

"My Lord, man, there isn't ten dollars in cash between here and the Missouri River!" "But the man and his children will starve, and his wife will die of neglect." "That's the Lord's affair--and yours, Mart," returned Fernald, as he broke away from the colonel's grasp; "you and He brought them here." Frye went with Oscar, and they left the colonel with his subscription paper in his hand.