from the path, and Margaret went on like a queen.

In town, a few days later, he saw a little fellow take off his hat when a lady
passed him, and it set Chad to thinking. He recalled asking the school-master
once what was meant when the latter read about a knight doffing his plume, and
the school-master had told him that men, in those days, took off their hats in
the presence of ladies just as they did in the Bluegrass now; but Chad had
forgotten. He understood it all then and he surprised Margaret, next morning,
by taking off his cap gravely when he spoke to her; and the little lady was
greatly pleased, for her own brothers did not do that, at least, not to her,
though she had heard her mother tell them that they must. All this must be
chivalry, Chad thought, and when Harry and Dan got well, he revived his old
ideas, but Harry laughed at him and Dan did, too, until Chad, remembering
Beelzebub, suggested that they should have a tournament with two rams that the
General had tied up in the stable. They would make spears and each would get
on a ram. Harry would let them out into the lot and they would have "a real
charge--sure enough." But Margaret received the plan with disdain, until Dan,
at Chad's suggestion, asked the General to read them the tournament scene in
"Ivanhoe," which excited the little lady a great deal; and when Chad said that
she must be the "Queen of Love and Beauty" she blushed prettily and thought,
after all, that it would be great fun. They would make lances of ash-wood and
helmets of tin buckets, and perhaps Margaret would make red sashes for them.
Indeed, she would, and the tournament would take place on the next Saturday.
But, on Saturday, one of the sheep was taken over to Major Buford's and the
other was turned loose in the Major's back pasture and the great day had to be
postponed.

It was on the night of the reading from "Ivanhoe" that Harry and Dan found out
how Chad could play the banjo. Passing old Mammy's cabin that night before
supper, the three boys had stopped to listen to old Tom play, and after a few