udden humor, he carried the light to the room where the boy was in
sound sleep, with his head on one sturdy arm, his hair loose on the
pillow, and his lips slightly parted and showing his white, even teeth;
he looked at the boy a long time and fancied he could see some
resemblance to the portrait in the set of the mouth and the nose and
the brow, and he went back smiling at his fancies and thinking--for the
Major was sensitive to the claim of any drop of the blood in his own
veins--no matter how diluted. He was a handsome little chap.

"How strange! How strange!"

And he smiled when he thought of the boy's last question.

"Where's YO' mammy?"

It had stirred the Major.

"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I've got no mammy--no nothin',
except Miss Lucy, and she don't live here. I'm afraid she won't be on
this earth long. Nobody lives here but me, Chad."

CHAPTER 9.

MARGARET

The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a
neighbor; so Chad was left alone.

"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go
anywhere you please."

And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the
Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against
the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the
quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the
fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome
Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and
protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that
face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by
Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go
once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran,
so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came
back, and said

"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"

He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could
scarcely realize that it was really he--Chad--Chad sitting up at the
table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little
negro girl--called Thanky-ma'am because she was born on Thanksgiving
day--and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him
now--and the school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be
sorry that he hadn't gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major
would see him--but how would the Major know the