and the creek-bridge where Major Buford had taken him into his carriage.  Major Buford was dead.  He had almost died in prison, Mrs. Dean said, and Chad choked and could say nothing.  Once, Dan began a series of eager questions about the house and farm, and the servants and the neighbors, but his mother’s answers were hesitant and he stopped short.  She, too, asked but few questions, and the three were quiet while the train rolled on with little more speed than Chad and Dixie had made on that long ago night-ride to save Dan and Rebel Jerry.  About that ride Chad had kept Harry’s lips and his own closed, for he wished no such appeal as that to go to Margaret Dean.  Margaret was not at the station in Lexington.  She was not well Rufus said; so Chad would not go with them that night, but would come out next day.

“I owe my son’s life to you, Captain Buford,” said Mrs. Dean, with trembling lip, “and you must make our house your home while you are here.  I bring that message to you from Harry and Margaret.  I know and they know now all you have done for us and all you have tried to do.”

Chad could hardly speak his thanks.  He would be in the Bluegrass only a few days, he stammered, but he would go out to see them next day.  That night he went to the old inn where the Major had taken him to dinner.  Next day he hired a horse from the livery stable where he had bought the old brood mare, and early in the afternoon he rode out the broad turnpike in a nervous tumult of feeling that more than once made him halt in the road.  He wore his uniform, which was new, and made him uncomfortable—­it looked too much like waving a victorious flag in the face of a beaten enemy—­but it was the only stitch of clothes he had, and that he might not explain.

It was the first of May.  Just eight years before, Chad with a burning heart had watched Richard Hunt gayly dancing with Margaret, while the dead chieftain, Morgan, gayly fiddled for the merry crowd.  Now the sun shone as it did then, the birds sang, the wind shook the happy leaves and trembled through the budding heads of bluegrass to show that nature had known no war and that her mood was never other than of hope and peace.  But there were no fat cattle browsing in the Dean pastures now, no flocks of Southdown sheep with frisking lambs The worm fences had lost their riders and were broken down here and there.  The gate sagged on its hinges; the fences around yard and garden and orchard had known no whitewash for years; the paint on the noble old house was cracked and peeling, the roof of the barn was sunken in, and the cabins of the quarters were closed, for the hand of war, though unclinched, still lay heavy on the home of the Deans.  Snowball came to take his horse.  He was respectful, but his white teeth did not flash the welcome Chad once had known.  Another horse stood at the hitching-post and on it was a cavalry saddle and a rebel army blanket, and Chad did not have to guess whose it might be.  From the porch,