"What? What'd you give for her?"

"Five dollars."

The Major looked pained, for he thought the boy was lying, but Richard Hunt
called him aside and told the story of the purchase; and then how the Major
did laugh--laughed until the tears rolled down his face.

And then and there he got out of his carriage and went into a saddler's shop
and bought a brand new saddle with a red blanket, and put it on the old mare
and hoisted the boy to his seat. Chad was to have no little honor in his day,
but he never knew a prouder moment than when he clutched the reins in his left
hand and squeezed his short legs against the fat sides of that old brown mare.

He rode down the street and back again, and then the Major told him he had
better put the black boy on the mare, to ride her home ahead of him, and Chad
reluctantly got off and saw the little darky on his new saddle and his new
horse.

"Take good keer o' that hoss, boy," he said, with a warning shake of his head,
and again the Major roared.

First, the Major said, he would go by the old University and leave word with
the faculty for the school-master when he should come there to matriculate;
and so, at a turnstile that led into a mighty green yard in the middle of
which stood a huge gray mass of stone, the carriage stopped, and the Major got
out and walked through the campus and up the great flight of stone steps and
disappeared. The mighty columns, the stone steps--where had Chad heard of
them? And then the truth flashed. This was the college of which the
school-master had told him down in the mountains, and, looking, Chad wanted to