and, he turned abruptly,
without a sound, and strode away.

CHAPTER 16.

AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER

And yet, the next time Chad saw Margaret, she spoke to him shyly but
cordially, and when he did not come near her, she stopped him on the
street one day and reminded him of his promise to come and see them.
And Chad knew the truth at once--that she had never asked her father
about him, but had not wanted to know what she had been told she must
not know, and had properly taken it for granted that her father would
not ask Chad to his house, if there were a good reason why he should
not come. But Chad did not go even to the Christmas party that Margaret
gave in town, though the Major urged him. He spent Christmas with the
Major, and he did go to a country party, where the Major was delighted
with the boy's grace and agility dancing the quadrille, and where the
lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in the way
of cutting pigeon's wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the
mountains. So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for
social purposes after Christmas, and had him go to Madam Blake's
dancing school, and promise to go to the next party to which he was
asked. And that Chad did--to the big gray house on the corner, through
whose widespread doors his longing eyes had watched Margaret and her
friends flitting like butterflies months before.

It intoxicated the boy--the lights, music, flowers, the little girls in
white--and Margaret. For the first time he met her friends, Nellie
Hunt, sister to Richard; Elizabeth Morgan, cousin to John Morgan; and
Miss Jennie Overstreet, who, young as she was, wrote poems--but Chad
had eyes only for Margaret. It was while he was dancing a quadrille
with her, that he noticed a tall, pale youth with black hair, glaring
at him, and he recognized Georgie Forbes, a champion of Margaret, and
the old enemy who had caused his first trouble in his new home. Chad
laughed with fearless gladness, and Margaret tossed her head. It was
Georgie now who blackened and spread the blot on Chad's good name, and
it was Georgie to whom Chad--fast learning the ways of
gentlemen--promptly sent a pompous challenge, that the difficulty might
be settled "in any way the gentleman saw fit." Georgie insultingly
declined to fight with one who was not his equal, and Chad boxed his
jaws in the presence of a crowd, floored him with one blow, and
contemptuously twisted his nose. Therea