"An' I KNOW Aunt Jane wouldn't 'a' keered about these leetle fixin's, fer I
have to have 'em, an' I know I've earned 'em anyways."

Then he closed the door softly on the spirits of the dead within, and caught
the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside. With his Barlow
knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw bush near by, folded
and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little pack to his shoulder, when
the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the bushes, close at hand. Old Nance,
lean and pied, was coming home; he had forgotten her, it was getting late, and
he was anxious to leave for fear some neighbor might come; but there was no
one to milk and, when she drew near with a low moo, he saw that her udders
were full and dripping. It would hurt her to go unmilked, so Chad put his
things down and took up a cedar piggin from a shelf outside the cabin and did
the task thoroughly--putting the strippings in a cup and, so strong was the
habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and setting them in
cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his rifle on one
shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile. There he stopped once
more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a short axe from the face of a
hickory log, staggered under the weight of his weapons up the mountain. The
sun was yet an hour high and, on the spur, he leaned his rifle against the big
poplar and set to work with his axe on a sapling close by--talking frankly now
to the God who made him:

"I reckon You know it, but I'm a-goin' to run away now. I hain't got no daddy
an' no mammy, an' I hain't never had none as I knows--but Aunt Jane
hyeh--she's been jes' like a mother to me an' I'm a-doin' fer her jes' whut I
wish You'd have somebody do fer my mother, ef You know whar she's a-layin'."

Eight round sticks he cut swiftly--four long and four short--and with these he