the question, even with his eyes, for they swept between high cliffs
again--higher than he had yet seen.

That night they ran from dark to dawn, for the river was broader and a
brilliant moon was high; and, all night, Chad could hear the swish of the
oars, as they floated in mysterious silence past the trees and the hills and
the moonlit cliffs, and he lay on his back, looking up at the moon and the
stars, and thinking about the land to which he was going and of Jack back in
the land he had left; and of little Melissa. She had behaved very strangely
during the last few days before the boy had left. She had not been sharp with
him, even in play. She had been very quiet--indeed, she scarcely spoke a word
to him, but she did little things for him that she had never done before, and
she was unusually kind to Jack. Once, Chad found her crying behind the barn,
and then she was very sharp with him, and told him to go away and cried more
than ever. Her little face looked very white, as she stood on the bank, and,
somehow, Chad saw it all that night in the river and among the trees and up
among the stars, but he little knew what it all meant to him or to her. He
thought of the Turners back at home, and he could see them sitting around the
big fire--Joel with his pipe, the old mother spinning flax, Jack asleep on the
hearth, and Melissa's big solemn eyes shining from the dark corner where she
lay wide-awake in bed and, when he went to sleep, her eyes followed him in his
dreams.

When he awoke, the day was just glimmering over the hills, and the chill air
made him shiver, as he built up the fire and began to get breakfast ready. At
noon, that day, though the cliffs were still high, the raft swung out into a
broader current, where the water ran smoothly and, once, the hills parted and,
looking past a log-cabin on the bank of the river, Chad saw a stone
house--relic of pioneer days--and, farther out, through a gap in the hills, a
huge house with great pillars around it and, on the hill-side, many sheep and