e an' I'm goin' to see you agin some day, if I can.
Good-by."

"Left that damned old mare to pay for his clothes and his board and his
schooling," muttered the Major. "By the gods"--he rose suddenly and
strode away--"I beg your pardon, Lucy."

A tear was running down each of Miss Lucy's faded cheeks.

Dawn that morning found Chad springing from a bed in a haystack--ten
miles from Lexington. By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the
Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly,
for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass
farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains. Higher and higher grew
the green swelling slopes, until, climbing one about noon next day, he
saw the blue foothills of the Cumberland through the clear air--and he
stopped and looked long, breathing hard from pure ecstasy. The
plain-dweller never knows the fierce home hunger that the mountain-born
have for hills.

Besides, beyond those blue summits were the Turners and the
school-master and Jack, waiting for him, and he forgot hunger and
weariness as he trod on eagerly toward them. That night, he stayed in a
mountain-cabin, and while the contrast of the dark room, the crowding
children, the slovenly dress, and the coarse food was strangely
disagreeable, along with the strange new shock came the thrill that all
this meant hills and home. It was about three o'clock of the fourth day
that, tramping up the Kentucky River, he came upon a long, even stretch
of smooth water, from the upper end of which two black boulders were
thrust out of the stream, and with a keener thrill he realized that he
was nearing home. He recalled seeing those rocks as the raft swept down
the river, and the old Squire had said that they were named after
oxen--"Billy and Buck." Opposite the rocks he met a mountaineer.

"How fer is it to Uncle Joel Turner's?"

"A leetle the rise o' six miles, I reckon."

The boy was faint with weariness, and those six miles seemed a dozen.
Idea of distance is vague among the mountaineers, and two hours of
weary travel followed, yet nothing that he recognized was in sight.
Once a bend of the river looked familiar, but when he neared it, the
road turned steeply from the river and over a high bluff, and the boy
started up with a groan. He meant to reach the summit before he stopped
to rest, but in sheer pain, he dropped a dozen paces from the top and
lay with his tongue, like a dog's, between his li