lived over on Stone Creek, in the
next cove but one, said that he would take charge of the boy. Nathan
did not wait for the burial, but went back home for his wagon, leaving
word that Chad was to stay all night with a neighbor and meet him at
the death-stricken cabin an hour by sun. The old man meant to have Chad
bound to him for seven years by law--the boy had been told that--and
Nathan hated dogs as much as Chad hated Nathan. So the lad did not lie
long. He did not mean to be bound out, nor to have Jack mistreated, and
he rose quickly and Jack sprang before him down the rocky path and
toward the hut that had been a home to both. Under the poplar, Jack
sniffed curiously at the new-made grave, and Chad called him away so
sharply that Jack's tail drooped and he crept toward his master, as
though to ask pardon for a fault of which he was not conscious. For one
moment, Chad stood looking. Again the stroke of the falling earth smote
his ears and his eyes filled; a curious pain caught him by the throat
and he passed on, whistling--down into the shadows below to the open
door of the cabin.

It was deathly still. The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of
brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of
hickory withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and
pans--had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and
beans and red pepper-pods--all ready for old Nathan when he should come
over for them, next morning, with his wagon. Not a living thing was to
be heard or seen that suggested human life, and Chad sat down in the
deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up the green walls that
bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where he should go,
if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who seemed to know that
some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a little way off, to
wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to make up his mind.

It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very
seriously about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come.
Digging back into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that
what had just happened now had happened to him once before, and that he
had simply wandered away. He could not recollect where he had started
from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived,
and why he had left them--usually because somebody, like old Nathan,
had wanted to have him bound out,