ght," said Chad.

That very afternoon Chad met Dan in a football game--an old-fashioned
game, in which there were twenty or thirty howling lads on each side
and nobody touched the ball except with his foot--met him so violently
that, clasped in each other's arms, they tumbled to the ground.

"Leggo!" said Dan.

"S'pose you leggo!" said Chad.

As Dan started after the ball he turned to look at Chad and after the
game he went up to him.

"Why, aren't you the boy who was out at Major Buford's once?"

"Yes." Dan thrust out his hand and began to laugh. So did Chad, and
each knew that the other was thinking of the tournament.

"In college?"

"Math'matics," said Chad. "I'm in the kitchen fer the rest."

"Oh!" said Dan. "Where you living?" Chad pointed to the dormitory, and
again Dan said "Oh!" in a way that made Chad flush, but added, quickly:

"You better play on our side to-morrow."

Chad looked at his clothes--foot-ball seemed pretty hard on clothes--"I
don't know," he said--"mebbe."

It was plain that neither of the boys was holding anything against
Chad, but neither had asked the mountain lad to come to see him--an
omission that was almost unforgivable according to Chad's social
ethics. So Chad proudly went into his shell again, and while the three
boys met often, no intimacy developed. Often he saw them with Margaret,
on the street, in a carriage or walking with a laughing crowd of boys
and girls; on the porticos of old houses or in the yards; and, one
night, Chad saw, through the wide-open door of a certain old house on
the corner of Mill and Market Streets, a party going on; and Margaret,
all in white, dancing, and he stood in the shade of the trees opposite
with new pangs shooting through him and went back to his room in
desolate loneliness, but with a new grip on his resolution that his own
day should yet come.

Steadily the boy worked, forging his way slowly but surely toward the
head of his class in the "kitchen," and the school-master helped him
unwearyingly. And it was a great help--mental and spiritual--to be near
the stern Puritan, who loved the boy as a brother and was ever ready to
guide him with counsel and aid him with his studies. In time the Major
went to the president to ask him about Chad, and that august dignitary
spoke of the lad in a way that made the Major, on his way through the
campus, swish through the grass with his cane in great satisfaction. He
always spoke of the boy now as hi