An hour later the big Dillon twins hove in sight, just as the Turner party was climbing the sawdust hill into the town, where Dolph and Rube were for taking the middle of the street like other mountaineers, who were marching thus ahead of them, single file, but Tom and the school-master laughed at them and drew them over to the sidewalk.  Bricks and stones laid down for people to walk on—­how wonderful.  And all the houses were of brick or were weather-boarded—­all built together wall against wall.  And the stores with the big glass windows all filled with wonderful things!  Then a pair of swinging green shutters through which, while Chad and the school-master waited outside, Tom insisted on taking Dolph and Rube and giving them their first drink of Bluegrass whiskey—­red liquor, as the hill-men call it.  A little farther on, they all stopped still on a corner of the street, while the school-master pointed out to Chad and Dolph and Rube the Capitol—­a mighty structure of massive stone, with majestic stone columns, where people went to the Legislature.  How they looked with wondering eyes at the great flag floating lazily over it, and at the wonderful fountain tossing water in the air, and with the water three white balls which leaped and danced in the jet of shining spray and never flew away from it.  How did they stay there?  The school-master laughed—­Chad had asked him a question at last that he couldn’t answer.  And the tall spiked iron fence that ran all the way around the yard, which was full of trees—­how wonderful that was, too!  As they stood looking, law-makers and visitors poured out through the doors—­a brave array—­some of them in tight trousers, high hats, and blue coats with brass buttons, and, as they passed, Caleb Hazel reverently whispered the names of those he knew—­distinguished lawyers, statesmen, and Mexican veterans:  witty Tom Marshall; Roger Hanson, bulky, brilliant; stately Preston, eagle-eyed Buckner, and Breckenridge, the magnificent, forensic in bearing.  Chad was thrilled.

A little farther on, they turned to the left, and the school-master pointed out the Governor’s mansion, and there, close by, was a high gray wall—­a wall as high as a house, with a wooden box taller than a man on each corner, and, inside, another big gray building in which, visible above the walls, were grated windows—­the penitentiary!  Every mountaineer has heard that word, and another—­the Legislator.

Chad shivered as he looked, for he could recall that sometimes down in the mountains a man would disappear for years and turn up again at home, whitened by confinement; and, during his absence, when anyone asked about him, the answer was penitentiary.  He wondered what those boxes on the walls were for, and he was about to ask, when a guard stepped from one of them with a musket and started to patrol the wall, and he had no need to ask.  Tom wanted to go up on the hill and look at the Armory and the graveyard, but the school-master