bullets in the pouch, but
they would last him until he could get far away. No more would he take,
however, than what he thought he could get along with--one blanket from
the bed and, from the fireplace, a little bacon and a pone of
corn-bread.

"An' I KNOW Aunt Jane wouldn't 'a' keered about these leetle fixin's,
fer I have to have 'em, an' I know I've earned 'em anyways."

Then he closed the door softly on the spirits of the dead within, and
caught the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside.
With his Barlow knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw
bush near by, folded and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little
pack to his shoulder, when the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the
bushes, close at hand. Old Nance, lean and pied, was coming home; he
had forgotten her, it was getting late, and he was anxious to leave for
fear some neighbor might come; but there was no one to milk and, when
she drew near with a low moo, he saw that her udders were full and
dripping. It would hurt her to go unmilked, so Chad put his things down
and took up a cedar piggin from a shelf outside the cabin and did the
task thoroughly--putting the strippings in a cup and, so strong was the
habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and setting
them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his
rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile.
There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a
short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of
his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the
spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with
his axe on a sapling close by--talking frankly now to the God who made
him:

"I reckon You know it, but I'm a-goin' to run away now. I hain't got no
daddy an' no mammy, an' I hain't never had none as I knows--but Aunt
Jane hyeh--she's been jes' like a mother to me an' I'm a-doin' fer her
jes' whut I wish You'd have somebody do fer my mother, ef You know whar
she's a-layin'."

Eight round sticks he cut swiftly--four long and four short--and with
these he built a low pen, as is the custom of the mountaineers, close
about the fresh mound, and, borrowing a board or two from each of the
other mounds, covered the grave from the rain. Then he sunk the axe
into the trunk of the great poplar as high up as he could reach--so
that it could easily be