passed, Caleb Hazel reverently whispered the names of those he
knew--distinguished lawyers, statesmen, and Mexican veterans: witty Tom
Marshall; Roger Hanson, bulky, brilliant; stately Preston, eagle-eyed Buckner,
and Breckenridge, the magnificent, forensic in bearing. Chad was thrilled.

A little farther on, they turned to the left, and the school-master pointed
out the Governor's mansion, and there, close by, was a high gray wall--a wall
as high as a house, with a wooden box taller than a man on each corner, and,
inside, another big gray building in which, visible above the walls, were
grated windows--the penitentiary! Every mountaineer has heard that word, and
another--the Legislator.

Chad shivered as he looked, for he could recall that sometimes down in the
mountains a man would disappear for years and turn up again at home, whitened
by confinement; and, during his absence, when anyone asked about him, the
answer was penitentiary. He wondered what those boxes on the walls were for,
and he was about to ask, when a guard stepped from one of them with a musket
and started to patrol the wall, and he had no need to ask. Tom wanted to go up
on the hill and look at the Armory and the graveyard, but the school-master
said they did not have time, and, on the moment, the air was startled with
whistles far and near--six o'clock! At once Caleb Hazel led the way to supper
in the boarding-house, where a kind-faced old lady spoke to Chad in a motherly
way, and where the boy saw his first hot biscuit and was almost afraid to eat
anything at the table for fear he might do something wrong. For the first time
in his life, too, he slept on a mattress without any feather-bed, and Chad lay
wondering, but unsatisfied still. Not yet had he been out of sight of the
hills, but the master had told him that they would see the Bluegrass next day,
when they were to start back to the mountains by train as far as Lexington.
And Chad went to sleep, dreaming his old dream.