This is a namesake of mine from the mountains. He's come up to see the
settlements."

Richard Hunt turned on his horse. "How do you like 'em?"

"Never seed nothin' like 'em in my life," said Chad, gravely. Morgan
laughed and Richard Hunt rode on with them down the street.

"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.

"Yes," said the Major. "Have you heard of him before?"

"Yes, sir. A feller on the road tol' me, if I was lookin' fer somethin'
to do hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan."

The Major laughed: "That's what everybody does."

At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty
meal; and while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the
streets.

"Don't get into trouble, my boy," said the Major, "an' come back here
an hour or two by sun."

Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest--to Cheapside.
Cheapside--at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from
pioneer days to the present hour--the platform that knew Clay,
Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of
to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the
Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang.

Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses,
farmers, aristocrats, negroes, poor whites. The air was a babel of
cries from auctioneers--head, shoulders, and waistband above the
crowd--and the cries of animals that were changing owners that day--one
of which might now and then be a human being. The Major was busy, and
Chad wandered where he pleased--keeping a sharp lookout everywhere for
the school-master, but though he asked right and left he could find
nobody, to his great wonder, who knew even the master's name. In the
middle of the afternoon the country people began to leave town and
Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a
crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and
in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in
plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out
one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable
moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys,
stable-boys, gentlemen--all eager spectators or bidders. Chad edged his
way through the outer rim of the crowd and to the edge of the sidewalk,
and, when a spectator stepped down from a dry-goods box from which he
had been look