fter open comment ceased. Chad
was making himself known. He was the swiftest runner on the football
field; he had the quickest brain in mathematics; he was elected to the
Periclean Society, and astonished his fellow-members with a fiery
denunciation of the men who banished Napoleon to St. Helena--so fiery
was it, indeed, that his opponents themselves began to wonder how that
crime had ever come to pass. He would fight at the drop of a hat, and
he always won; and by-and-by the boy began to take a fierce joy in
battling his way upward against a block that would have crushed a
weaker soul. It was only with Margaret that that soul was in awe. He
began to love her with a pure reverence that he could never know at
another age. Every Saturday night, when dusk fell, he was mounting the
steps of her house. Every Sunday morning he was waiting to take her
home from church. Every afternoon he looked for her, hoping to catch
sight of her on the streets, and it was only when Dan and Harry got
indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of Chad in
the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the
matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It
was right that they should be kind to the boy--for Major Buford's sake,
if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more
than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the
truth. Immediately, when Chad next saw her, her honest eyes sadly told
him that she knew the truth, and Chad gave up then. Thereafter he
disappeared from sports and from his kind every way, except in the
classroom and in the debating hall. Sullenly he stuck to his books.
From five o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, he was at
them steadily, in his room, or at recitation except for an hour's walk
with the school-master and the three half-hours that his meals kept him
away. He grew so pale and thin that the Major and Caleb Hazel were
greatly worried, but protest from both was useless. Before the end of
the term he had mounted into college in every study, and was holding
his own. At the end he knew his power--knew what he COULD do, and his
face was set, for his future, dauntless. When vacation came, he went at
once to the Major's farm, but not to be idle. In a week or two he was
taking some of the reins into his own hands as a valuable assistant to
the Major. He knew a good horse, could guess the weight of a steer with