lowing morning, Chad rose early and took his old rifle out into
the woods, and when the Major came out on the porch before breakfast
the boy was coming up the walk with six squirrels in his hand. The
Major's eyes opened and he looked at the squirrels when Chad dropped
them on the porch. Every one of them was shot through the head.

"Well, I'm damned! How many times did you shoot, Chad?"

"Seven."

"What--missed only once?"

"I took a knot fer a squirrel once," said Chad.

The Major roared aloud.

"Did I say I was going to teach you to shoot, Chad?"

"Yes, sir."

The Major chuckled and that day he told about those squirrels and that
knot to everybody he saw. With every day the Major grew fonder and
prouder of the boy and more convinced than ever that the lad was of his
own blood.

"There's nothing that I like that that boy don't take to like a duck to
water." And when he saw the boy take off his hat to Margaret and
observed his manner with the little girl, he said to himself that if
Chad wasn't a gentleman born, he ought to have been, and the Major
believed that he must be.

Everywhere, at school, at the Deans', with the darkies--with everybody
but Conners, the overseer, had became a favorite, but, as to Napoleon,
so to Chad, came Waterloo--with the long deferred tournament came
Waterloo to Chad.

And it came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken
Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland--in
the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an
amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John
Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome
face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt
and--Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang out, and Richard
Hunt bowed low to his little partner, who, smiling and blushing,
dropped him the daintiest of graceful courtesies. Then the miracle came
to pass. Rage straightway shook Chad's soul--shook it as a terrier
shakes a rat--and the look on his face and in his eyes went back a
thousand years. And Richard Hunt, looking up, saw the strange
spectacle, understood, and did not even smile. On the contrary, he went
at once after the dance to speak to the boy and got for his answer
fierce, white, staring silence and a clinched fist, that was almost
ready to strike. Something else that was strange happened then to Chad.
He felt a very firm and a very gentle h