e school-master at nights, and wandering in the woods
with Jack and his rifle. And he hungered for spring to come again when
he should go with the Turner boys to take another raft of logs down the
river to the capital. Spring came, and going out to the back pasture
one morning, Chad found a long-legged, ungainly creature stumbling
awkwardly about his old mare--a colt! That, too, he owed the Major, and
he would have burst with pride had he known that the colt's sire was a
famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go down the river
again. He did not let the Major know he was coming and, through a
nameless shyness, he could not bring himself to go to see his old
friend and kinsman, but in Lexington, while he and the school-master
were standing on Cheapside, the Major whirled around a corner on them
in his carriage, and, as on the turnpike a year before, old Tom, the
driver, called out:

"Look dar, Mars Cal!" And there stood Chad.

"Why, bless my soul! Chad--why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had
grown, and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major
insisted on taking him home, and the school-master, too, who went
reluctantly. Miss Lucy was there, looking whiter and more fragile than
ever, and she greeted Chad with a sweet kindliness that took the sting
from his unjust remembrance of her. And what that failure to understand
her must have been Chad better knew when he saw the embarrassed awe, in
her presence, of the school-master, for whom all in the mountains had
so much reverence. At the table was Thankyma'am waiting. Around the
quarters and the stable the pickaninnies and servants seemed to
remember the boy in a kindly genuine way that touched him, and even
Jerome Conners, the overseer, seemed glad to see him. The Major was
drawn at once to the grave school-master, and he had a long talk with
him that night. It was no use, Caleb Hazel said, trying to persuade the
boy to live with the Major--not yet. And the Major was more content
when he came to know in what good hands the boy was, and, down in his
heart, he loved the lad the more for his sturdy independence, and for
the pride that made him shrink from facing the world with the shame of
his birth; knowing that Chad thought of him perhaps more than of
himself. Such unwillingness to give others trouble seemed remarkable in
so young a lad. Not once did the Major mention the Deans to the boy,
and about them Chad asked no questions--not even when he