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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
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