, for he had no other
clothes, and while he lay in bed the Major came up and listened to
Chad's story of the afternoon, which Chad told him word for word just
as it had all happened.

"You did just right, Chad," said the Major, and he went down the
stairs, chuckling:

"Wouldn't go in and get dry clothes because Dan wouldn't apologize.
Dear me! I reckon they'll have it out when they see each other again.
I'd like to be on hand, and I'd bet my bottom dollar on Chad." But they
did not have it out. Half an hour after supper somebody shouted
"Hello!" at the gate, and the Major went out and came back smiling.

"Somebody wants to see you, Chad," he said. And Chad went out and found
Dan there on the black pony with Snowball behind him.

"I've come over to say that I had no business hittin' you down at the
creek, and--" Chad interrupted him:

"That's all right," he said, and Dan stopped and thrust out his hand.
The two boys shook hands gravely.

"An' my papa says you are a man an' he wants you to come over and see
us and I want you--and Harry and Margaret. We all want you."

"All right," said Chad. Dan turned his black pony and galloped off.

"An' come soon!" he shouted back.

Out in the quarters Mammy Ailsie, old Tom's wife, was having her own
say that night.

"Ole Marse Cal Buford pickin' a piece of white trash out de gutter an'
not sayin' whar he come from an' nuttin' 'bout him. An' old Mars Henry
takin' him jus' like he was quality. My Tom say dae boy don' know who
is his mammy ner his daddy. I ain' gwine to let my little mistis play
wid no sech trash, I tell you--'deed I ain't!" And this talk would
reach the drawing-room by and by, where the General was telling the
family, at just about the same hour, the story of the horse sale and
Chad's purchase of the old brood mare.

"I knew where he was from right away," said Harry. "I've seen
mountain-people wearing caps like his up at Uncle Brutus's, when they
come down to go to Richmond."

The General frowned.

"Well, you won't see any more people like him up there again."

"Why, papa?"

"Because you aren't going to Uncle Brutus's any more."

"Why, papa?"

The mother put her hand on her husband's knee.

"Never mind, son," she said.

CHAPTER 10.

THE BLUEGRASS

God's Country!

No humor in that phrase to the Bluegrass Kentuckian! There never
was--there is none now. To him, the land seems in all the New World, to
have been the pet shrine of the Great