the thought.

"You ain't told me yo' name," he said, presently. The Major's lips
smiled under the brim of his hat.

"You hain't axed me."

"Well, I axe you now." Chad, too, was smiling.

"Cal," said the Major. "Cal what?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, yes, you do, now--you foolin' me"--the boy lifted one finger at
the Major.

"Buford, Calvin Buford."

"Buford--Buford--Buford," repeated the boy, each time with his forehead
wrinkled as though he were trying to recall something.

"What is it, Chad?"

"Nothin'--nothin'."

And then he looked up with bewildered face at the Major and broke into
the quavering voice of an old man.

"Chad Buford, you little devil, come hyeh this minute or I'll beat the
life outen you!"

"What--what!" said the Major excitedly. The boy's face was as honest as
the sky above him. "Well, that's funny--very funny."

"Well, that's it," said Chad, "that's what ole Nathan used to call me.
I reckon I hain't naver thought o' my name agin tell you axed me." The
Major looked at the lad keenly and then dropped back in his seat
ruminating.

Away back in 1778 a linchpin had slipped in a wagon on the Wilderness
Road and his grandfather's only brother, Chadwick Buford, had concluded
to stop there for a while and hunt and come on later--thus ran an old
letter that the Major had in his strong box at home--and that brother
had never turned up again and the supposition was that he had been
killed by Indians. Now it would be strange if he had wandered up in the
mountains and settled there and if this boy were a descendant of his.
It would be very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at
the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The
boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame,
that he was a waif--a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And
so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that
it was a peculiar coincidence--again saying, half to himself--

"It certainly is very odd!"

CHAPTER 8.

HOME WITH THE MAJOR

Ahead of them, it was Court Day in Lexington. From the town, as a
centre, white turnpikes radiated in every direction like the strands of
a spider's web. Along them, on the day before, cattle, sheep, and hogs
had made their slow way. Since dawn, that morning, the fine dust had
been rising under hoof and wheel on every one of them, for Court Day is
yet the great day of every month throughout the Blueg