ld not ask
the Major to let him go--he was too shy about it--and Chad was glad
when bedtime came.

Two days more and spring was come in earnest. It was in the softness of
the air, the tenderness of cloud and sky, and the warmth of the
sunlight. The grass was greener and the trees quivered happily. Hens
scratched and cocks crowed more lustily. Insect life was busier. A
stallion nickered in the barn, and from the fields came the mooing of
cattle. Field-hands going to work chaffed the maids about the house and
quarters. It stirred dreamy memories of his youth in the Major, and it
brought a sad light into Miss Lucy's faded eyes. Would she ever see
another spring? It brought tender memories to General Dean, and over at
Woodlawn, after he and Mrs. Dean had watched the children go off with
happy cries and laughter to school, it led them back into the house
hand in hand. And it set Chad's heart aglow as he walked through the
dewy grass and amid the singing of many birds toward the pike gate. He,
too, was on his way to school--in a brave new suit of clothes--and
nobody smiled at him now, except admiringly, for the Major had taken
him to town the preceding day and had got the boy clothes such as Dan
and Harry wore. Chad was worried at first--he did not like to accept so
much from the Major.

"I'll pay you back," said Chad. "I'll leave you my hoss when I go 'way,
if I don't," and the Major laughingly said that was all right and he
made Chad, too, think that it was all right. And so spring took the
shape of hope in Chad's breast, that morning, and a little later it
took the shape of Margaret, for he soon saw the Dean children ahead of
him in the road and he ran to catch up with them.

All looked at him with surprise--seeing his broad white collar with
ruffles, his turned-back, ruffled cuffs, and his boots with red tops;
but they were too polite to say anything. Still Chad felt Margaret
taking them all in and he was proud and confident. And, when her eyes
were lifted to the handsome face that rose from the collar and the
thick yellow hair, he caught them with his own in an unconscious look
of fealty, that made the little girl blush and hurry on and not look at
him again until they were in school, when she turned her eyes, as did
all the other boys and girls, to scan the new "scholar." Chad's work in
the mountains came in well now. The teacher, a gray, sad-eyed,
thin-faced man, was surprised at the boy's capacity, for he could rea