Peter had no opinion on that head.  He knew what a nigger was, and at once detected another odor besides bad tobacco, and opened the window to air the room.  Then he began to study the postmark to see where the letter came from.  It was not very clear, and it took him some time to make out “Palatka, Fla.”  The latter baffled him, it was so illegible, but he was sure of “Palatka,” and wondered where it was.  Hunting up an atlas, he went patiently through State after State, till he found Palatka, on the St. John’s River, Florida.

“Florida!  That’s where he’s gone.  There are niggers enough there, but who the Crackers are is beyond me,” Peter said.  “I believe I’ll copy this, letter.”

He did copy it, and then waited for developments.

Meanwhile the Colonel was hurrying South as fast as steam could take him.  Arrived in New York, he found himself in time to take a boat bound for Savannah, and shutting himself up in his stateroom sat down to analyze his feelings, and solve the problem which had for so long been confronting him.  A part of it was solved for him.  Eudora was dead; but there was the child.  Something must be done with her, and Jake’s words kept repeating themselves in his mind: 

“She doan or’ter be brung up wid Crackers an’ niggers.”

“No, she don’t or’ter,” the Colonel thought, involuntarily adopting Jake’s dialect; but what to do with her was the question.

If Tom Hardy had been home he would have consulted him, but Tom was away, and he must face the difficulty alone, knowing perfectly well what his duty was, and finally making up his mind to do it.  If he chose to adopt a child it was no one’s business.  As a Crompton he was above caring for gossip or public opinion.  To be sure the child would be a nuisance, and a constant reminder of what he would like to forget; but it was right, and he owed it to the mother to care for her little girl.  He began to think a good deal of himself for this kind of reasoning, and by the time he reached Jacksonville he had made up his mind that he was a pretty nice man after all, and felt happier than he had in years.  Death had closed one page of his life, and the distance between Florida and Massachusetts would close the other, and he was much like himself when he at last stepped on board the “Hatty,” and started up the river.

There was room for him at the Brock House this time, and he registered his name.  “Col.  James Crompton, Crompton, Mass.,” and said he had come to look after a family in the palmetto clearing, Harris was the name, and through a friend he was interested in them.  The landlord was not the same who had been there on the occasion of the Colonel’s first visit, but he knew something about the clearing, and volunteered whatever information he had concerning the family, speaking of the recent death of the demented old woman, and of the little child left to the care of two negroes, and saying, he hoped the gentleman had come to take it to its friends, if it had any.