curiosity at first, and for a little while Chad suffered; but when the dance
turned attention from him, he forgot himself again and made the old thing hum
with all the rousing tunes that had ever swept its string. When he stopped at
last, to wipe the perspiration from his face, he noticed for the first time
the school-master, who was yet divided between the church and the law,
standing at the door, silent, grave, disapproving. And he was not alone in his
condemnation; in many a cabin up and down the river, stern talk was going on
against the ungodly 'carryings on,' under the Turner roof, and, far from
accepting them as proofs of a better birth and broader social ideas, these
Calvinists of the hills set the merry-makers down as the special prey of the
devil, and the dance and the banjo as sly plots of the same to draw their
souls to hell.

Chad felt the master's look, and he did not begin playing again, but put the
banjo down by his chair and the dance came to an end. Once more Chad saw the
master look, this time at Sintha, who was leaning against the wall with a
sturdy youth in a fringed hunting-shirt bending over her--his elbow against a
log directly over her shoulder, Sintha saw the look, too, and she answered
with a little toss of her head, but when Caleb Hazel turned to go out the
door, Chad saw that the girl's eyes followed him. A little later, Chad went
out too, and found the master at the corner of the fence and looking at a low
red star whose rich, peaceful light came through a gap in the hills. Chad
shyly drew near him, hoping in some way to get a kindly word, but the master
was so absorbed that he did not see or hear the boy and Chad, awed by the
stern, solemn face, withdrew and, without a word to anybody, climbed into the
loft and went to bed. He could hear every stroke on the floor below, every
call of the prompter, and the rude laughter and banter, but he gave little
heed to it all. For he lay thinking of Caleb Hazel and listening again to the
stories he and the cattle-dealer had told him about the wonderful settlements.
"God's Country," the dealer always called it, and such it must be, if what he