"Yes," said the Major. "Have you heard of him before?"

"Yes, sir. A feller on the road tol' me, if I was lookin' fer somethin' to do
hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan."

The Major laughed: "That's what everybody does."

At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty meal; and
while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the streets.

"Don't get into trouble, my boy," said the Major, "an' come back here an hour or
two by sun."

Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest--to Cheapside.
Cheapside--at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from
pioneer days to the present hour--the platform that knew Clay, Crittenden,
Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of to-day, who resemble
those giants of old as the woodlands of the Bluegrass to-day resemble the
primeval forests from which they sprang.

Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, farmers,
aristocrats, negroes, poor whites. The air was a babel of cries from
auctioneers--head, shoulders, and waistband above the crowd--and the cries of
animals that were changing owners that day--one of which might now and then be
a human being. The Major was busy, and Chad wandered where he pleased--keeping
a sharp lookout everywhere for the school-master, but though he asked right
and left he could find nobody, to his great wonder, who knew even the master's
name. In the middle of the afternoon the country people began to leave town
and Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a
crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and in a