the Bluegrass now and go to school?"

Chad's eyes lighted up.

"I reckon I would; but how am I goin' to school, now, I'd like to know?
I ain't got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have
to pay to go to school, up here."

"Well, we'll see about that," said the Major, and Chad wondered what he
meant. Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured
out a drink of whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped:

"Will you join me?" he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the
Major to omit that formula even with a boy.

"I don't keer if I do," said Chad, gravely. The Major was astounded and
amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him
the bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and
drank it down without winking. At the fire, the Major pulled out his
chewing tobacco. This, too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the
Major in the accuracy with which he reached the fireplace thereafter
with the juice, carrying off his accomplishment, too, with perfect and
unconscious gravity. The Major was nigh to splitting with silent
laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.

"Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?"

"Yes, sir," said Chad. "Everybody makes his own licker where I come
from."

"Don't you know it's very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"

"No, sir."

"Did nobody ever tell you it was very bad for little boys to drink and
chew?"

"No, sir"--not once had Chad forgotten that.

"Well, it is."

Chad thought for a minute. "Will it keep me from gittin' to be a BIG
man?"

"Yes."

Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.

"Well, I be damned," said the Major under his breath. "Are you goin' to
quit?"

"Yes, sir."

Meanwhile, the old driver, whose wife lived on the next farm, was
telling the servants over there about the queer little stranger whom
his master had picked up on the road that day, and after Chad was gone
to bed, the Major got out some old letters from a chest and read them
over again. Chadwick Buford was his great-grandfather's twin brother,
and not a word had been heard of him since the two had parted that
morning on the old Wilderness Road, away back in the earliest pioneer
days. So, the Major thought and thought suppose--suppose? And at last
he got up and with an uplifted candle, looked a long while at the
portrait of his grandfather that hung on the southern wall. Then, with
a s