never guessed--what it cost the little girl to support him bravely in his
purpose, and to stand with smiling face when the first breath of one sombre
autumn stole through the hills, and Chad and the school-master left the
Turner home for the Bluegrass, this time to stay.

She stood in the doorway after they had waved good-by from the head of the
river--the smile gone and her face in a sudden dark eclipse. The wise old
mother went in-doors. Once the girl started through the yard as though she
would rush after them and stopped at the gate, clinching it hard with both
hands. As suddenly she became quiet.

She went in-doors to her work and worked quietly and without a word. Thus she
did all day while her mind and her heart ached. When she went after the cows
before sunset she stopped at the barn where Beelzebub had been tied. She
lifted her eyes to the hay-loft where she and Chad had hunted for hens' eggs
and played hide-and-seek. She passed through the orchard where they had
worked and played so many happy hours, and on to the back pasture where the
Dillon sheep had been killed and she had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack.
And she saw and noted everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she
gave no sign that night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered
head give way. Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad
way with women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness
Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful world where one had but to do and
dare to reach the stars. The men who had trod that road had made that big
world beyond, and their life Chad himself had lived so far. Only, where they
had lived he had been born--in a log cabin. Their weapons--the axe and the
rifle-- had been his. He had had the same fight with Nature as they. He knew
as well as they what life in the woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude
sports and pastimes, their log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties,
corn-huskings, feats of strength, had been his. He had the same lynx eyes,