Still the boy went back sturdily to his old life, working in the fields, busy
about the house and stable, going to school, reading and studying with the
school-master at nights, and wandering in the woods with Jack and his rifle.
And he hungered for spring to come again when he should go with the Turner
boys to take another raft of logs down the river to the capital. Spring came,
and going out to the back pasture one morning, Chad found a long-legged,
ungainly creature stumbling awkwardly about his old mare--a colt! That, too,
he owed the Major, and he would have burst with pride had he known that the
colt's sire was a famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go
down the river again. He did not let the Major know he was coming and,
through a nameless shyness, he could not bring himself to go to see his old
friend and kinsman, but in Lexington, while he and the school-master were
standing on Cheapside, the Major whirled around a corner on them in his
carriage, and, as on the turnpike a year before, old Tom, the driver, called
out:

"Look dar, Mars Cal!" And there stood Chad.

"Why, bless my soul! Chad--why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had grown,
and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major insisted on taking
him home, and the school-master, too, who went reluctantly. Miss Lucy was
there, looking whiter and more fragile than ever, and she greeted Chad with a
sweet kindliness that took the sting from his unjust remembrance of her. And
what that failure to understand her must have been Chad better knew when he
saw the embarrassed awe, in her presence, of the school-master, for whom all
in the mountains had so much reverence. At the table was Thankyma'am waiting.
Around the quarters and the stable the pickaninnies and servants seemed to
remember the boy in a kindly genuine way that touched him, and even Jerome
Conners, the overseer, seemed glad to see him. The Major was drawn at once to