"Seven."

"What--missed only once?"

"I took a knot fer a squirrel once," said Chad.

The Major roared aloud.

"Did I say I was going to teach you to shoot, Chad?"

"Yes, sir."

The Major chuckled and that day he told about those squirrels and that knot to
everybody he saw. With every day the Major grew fonder and prouder of the boy
and more convinced than ever that the lad was of his own blood.

"There's nothing that I like that that boy don't take to like a duck to
water." And when he saw the boy take off his hat to Margaret and observed his
manner with the little girl, he said to himself that if Chad wasn't a
gentleman born, he ought to have been, and the Major believed that he must be.

Everywhere, at school, at the Deans', with the darkies--with everybody but
Conners, the overseer, had became a favorite, but, as to Napoleon, so to Chad,
came Waterloo--with the long deferred tournament came Waterloo to Chad.

And it came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to
the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland--in the bottom of
a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to
fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes