And there were churches everywhere as tall as trees and school-houses a-plenty; and big schools, called colleges, to which the boys went when they were through with the little schools.  The master had gone to one of these colleges for a year, and he was trying to make enough money to go again.  And Chad must go some day, too; there was no reason why he shouldn’t, since any boy could do anything he pleased if he only made up his mind and worked hard and never gave up.  The master was an orphan, too, he said with a slow smile; he had been an orphan for a long while, and indeed the lonely struggle of his own boyhood was what was helping to draw him to Chad.  This college, he said, was a huge brown house as big as a cliff that the master pointed out, that, gray and solemn, towered high above the river; and with a rock porch bigger than a great bowlder that hung just under the cliff, with twenty long, long stone steps to climb before one came to the big double front door.

“How do you git thar?” Chad asked so breathlessly that Melissa looked quickly up with a sudden foreboding that she might lose her little playfellow some day.  The master had walked, and it took him a week.  A good horse could make the trip in four days, and the river-men floated logs down the river to the capital in eight or ten days, according to the “tide.”  “When did they go?” In the spring, when the ‘tides’ came.  “The Turners went down, didn’t they, Melissa?” And Melissa said that her brother Tom had made one trip, and that Dolph and Rube were “might’ nigh crazy” to go that coming spring; and, thereupon, a mighty resolution filled Chad’s heart to the brim and steadied his eyes, but he did not open his lips then.

Dusk was settling when the Turner cabin came in sight.  None of the men-folks had come home yet, and the mother was worried; there was wood to cut and the cows to milk, and Chad’s friend, old Betsey the brindle, had strayed off again; but she was glad to see Caleb Hazel, who, without a word, went out to the wood-pile, took off his coat, and swung the axe with mighty arms, while Chad carried in the wood and piled it in the kitchen and then the two went after the old brindle together.

When they got back there was a great tumult at the cabin.  Tom had brought some friends from over the mountain, and had told the neighbors as he came along that there was going to be a party at his house that night.

So there was a great bustle about the barn where Rube was getting the stock fed and the milking done; and around the kitchen, where Dolph was cutting more wood and piling it up at the door.  Inside, the mother was hurrying up supper with Sintha, an older daughter, who had just come home from a visit, and Melissa helping her, while old Joel sat by the fire in the sleeping-room and smoked, with Jack lying on the hearth, or anywhere he pleased, for Jack, with his gentle ways, was winning the household one by one.  He sprang up when he