snowy nights, Chad and the school-master--for he too lived at the Turners'
now--sat before the fire in the kitchen, and the school-master read to him
from "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman," which he had brought from the Bluegrass,
and from the Bible which had been his own since he was a child. And the boy
drank in the tales until he was drunk with them and learned the conscious
scorn of a lie, the conscious love of truth and pride in courage, and the
conscious reverence for women that make the essence of chivalry as
distinguished from the unthinking code of brave, simple people. He adopted the
master's dignified phraseology as best he could; he watched him, as the master
stood before the fire with his hands under his coat-tails, his chin raised,
and his eyes dreamily upward, and Tall Tom caught the boy in just this
attitude one day and made fun of him before all the others. He tried some
high-sounding phrases on Melissa, and Melissa told him he must be crazy. Once,
even, he tried to kiss her hand gallantly and she slapped his face. Undaunted,
he made a lance of white ash, threaded some loose yarn into Melissa's colors,
as he told himself, sneaked into the barn, where Beelzebub was tied, got on
the sheep's back and, as the old ram sprang forward, couched his lance at the
trough and shattered it with a thrill that left him trembling for half an
hour. It was too good to give up that secret joust and he made another lance
and essayed another tournament, but this time Beelzebub butted the door open
and sprang with a loud ba-a-a into the yard and charged for the gate--in full
view of old Joel, the three brothers, and the school-master, who were standing
in the road. Instinctively, Chad swung on in spite of the roar of laughter and
astonishment that greeted him and, as Tom banged the gate, the ram swerved and
Chad shot off sidewise as from a catapult and dropped, a most unheroic little
knight, in the mire. That ended Chad's chivalry in the hills, for in the roars
of laughter that greeted him, Chad recognized Caleb Hazel's as the loudest. If
HE laughed, chivalry could never thrive there, and Chad gave it up; but the
seeds were sown.