ng, in cheerful confidence,
behind. It is probable that Jack noticed, as soon as Chad, the swirl of
smoke rising from a broad ravine that spread into broad fields, skirted
by the great sweep of the river, for he sniffed the air sharply, and
trotted suddenly ahead. It was a cheering sight for Chad. Two negro
slaves were coming from work in a corn-field close by, and Jack's hair
rose when he saw them, and, with a growl, he slunk behind his master.
Dazed, Chad looked at them.

"Whut've them fellers got on their faces?" he asked. Tom laughed.

"Hain't you nuver seed a nigger afore?" he asked.

Chad shook his head.

"Lots o' folks from yo' side o' the mountains nuver have seed a
nigger," said Tom. "Sometimes hit skeers 'em."

"Hit don't skeer me," said Chad.

At the gate of the barn-yard, in which was a long stable with a deeply
sloping roof, stood the old brindle cow, who turned to look at Jack,
and, as Chad followed the three brothers through the yard gate, he saw
a slim scarlet figure vanish swiftly from the porch into the house.

In a few minutes, Chad was inside the big log cabin and before a big
log-fire, with Jack between his knees and turning his soft human eyes
keenly from one to another of the group about his little master,
telling how the mountain cholera had carried off the man and the woman
who had been father and mother to him, and their children; at which the
old mother nodded her head in growing sympathy, for there were two
fresh mounds in her own graveyard on the point of a low hill not far
away; how old Nathan Cherry, whom he hated, had wanted to bind him out,
and how, rather than have Jack mistreated and himself be ill-used, he
had run away along the mountain-top; how he had slept one night under a
log with Jack to keep him warm; how he had eaten sassafras and birch
back and had gotten drink from the green water-bulbs of the wild
honeysuckle; and how, on the second day, being hungry, and without
powder for his gun, he had started, when the sun sank, for the shadows
of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old
mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the
kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine
of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the
delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old
Joel, the father of the house, came in--a giant in size and a mighty
hunter--and he sl