brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of hickory
withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and pans--had been piled
on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and beans and red pepper-pods--all
ready for old Nathan when he should come over for them, next morning, with his
wagon. Not a living thing was to be heard or seen that suggested human life,
and Chad sat down in the deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up
the green walls that bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where
he should go, if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who seemed to
know that some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a little way off, to
wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to make up his mind.

It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very seriously
about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come. Digging back
into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that what had just
happened now had happened to him once before, and that he had simply wandered
away. He could not recollect where he had started from first, but he could
recall many of the places where he had lived, and why he had left
them--usually because somebody, like old Nathan, had wanted to have him bound
out, or had misused Jack, or would not let the two stray off into the woods
together, when there was nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where
he was now, because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great
fancy to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains and drive
sheep and, if they stayed out in the woods over night, struck neither a stroke
of hand nor tongue. The old mother had been his mother and, once more, Chad
leaned his head against the worn lintel and wept silently. So far, nobody had
seemed to care particularly who he was, or was not--nor had Chad. Most people
were very kind to him, looking upon him as one of the wandering waifs that one
finds throughout the Cumberland, upon whom the good folks of the mountains do
not visit the father's sin. He knew what he was thought to be, and it mattered
so little, since it made no discrimination against him, that he had accepted