azel smiled and shook
his head. And had Chad waited another half hour, he would not have
asked the question, even with his eyes, for they swept between high
cliffs again--higher than he had yet seen.

That night they ran from dark to dawn, for the river was broader and a
brilliant moon was high; and, all night, Chad could hear the swish of
the oars, as they floated in mysterious silence past the trees and the
hills and the moonlit cliffs, and he lay on his back, looking up at the
moon and the stars, and thinking about the land to which he was going
and of Jack back in the land he had left; and of little Melissa. She
had behaved very strangely during the last few days before the boy had
left. She had not been sharp with him, even in play. She had been very
quiet--indeed, she scarcely spoke a word to him, but she did little
things for him that she had never done before, and she was unusually
kind to Jack. Once, Chad found her crying behind the barn, and then she
was very sharp with him, and told him to go away and cried more than
ever. Her little face looked very white, as she stood on the bank, and,
somehow, Chad saw it all that night in the river and among the trees
and up among the stars, but he little knew what it all meant to him or
to her. He thought of the Turners back at home, and he could see them
sitting around the big fire--Joel with his pipe, the old mother
spinning flax, Jack asleep on the hearth, and Melissa's big solemn eyes
shining from the dark corner where she lay wide-awake in bed and, when
he went to sleep, her eyes followed him in his dreams.

When he awoke, the day was just glimmering over the hills, and the
chill air made him shiver, as he built up the fire and began to get
breakfast ready. At noon, that day, though the cliffs were still high,
the raft swung out into a broader current, where the water ran smoothly
and, once, the hills parted and, looking past a log-cabin on the bank
of the river, Chad saw a stone house--relic of pioneer days--and,
farther out, through a gap in the hills, a huge house with great
pillars around it and, on the hill-side, many sheep and fat cattle and
a great barn. There dwelt one of the lords of the Bluegrass land, and
again Chad looked to the school-master and, this time, the
school-master smiled and nodded as though to say:

"We're getting close now, Chad." So Chad rose to his feet thrilled, and
watched the scene until the hills shut it off again. One more night an