“I wonder if it’ll make any difference if I go up thar?” he said to the old driver.

“No,” the old man hesitated—­“no, suh, co’se not.”  And Chad climbed out and the old negro followed him with his eyes.  He did not wholly approve of his master’s picking up an unknown boy on the road.  It was all right to let him ride, but to be taking him home—­old Tom shook his head.

“Jess wait till Miss Lucy sees that piece o’ white trash,” he said, shaking his head.  Chad was walking slowly with his eyes raised.  It must be the college where the school-master had gone to school—­for the building was as big as the cliff that he had pointed out down in the mountains, and the porch was as big as the black rock that he pointed out at the same time—­the college where Caleb Hazel said Chad, too, must go some day.  The Major was coming out when the boy reached the foot of the steps, and with him was a tall, gray man with spectacles and a white tie and very white nails, and the Major said: 

“There he is now, Professor.”  And the Professor looked at Chad curiously, and smiled and smiled again kindly when he saw the boy’s grave, unsmiling eyes fastened on him.

Then, out of the town and through the late radiant afternoon they went until the sun sank and the carriage stopped before a gate.  While the pickaninny was opening it, another carriage went swiftly behind them, and the Major called out cleanly to the occupants—­a quiet, sombre, dignified-looking man and two handsome boys and a little girl.  “They’re my neighbors, Chad,” said the Major.

Not a sound did the wheels make on the thick turf as they drove toward the old-fashioned brick house (it had no pillars), with its windows shining through the firs and cedars that filled the yard.  The Major put his hand on the boy’s shoulder: 

“Well, here we are, little man.”

At the yard gate there was a great barking of dogs, and a great shout of welcome from the negroes who came forward to take the horses.  To each of them the Major gave a little package, which each darky took with shining teeth and a laugh of delight—­all looking with wonder at the curious little stranger with his rifle and coonskin cap, until a scowl from the Major checked the smile that started on each black face.  Then the Major led Chad up a flight of steps and into a big hall and on into a big drawing-room, where there was a huge fireplace and a great fire that gave Chad a pang of homesickness at once.  Chad was not accustomed to taking off his hat when he entered a house in the mountains, but he saw the Major take off his, and he dropped his own cap quickly.  The Major sank into a chair.

“Here we are, little man,” he said, kindly.

Chad sat down and looked at the books, and the portraits and prints, and the big mirrors and the carpets on the floor, none of which he had ever seen before, and he wondered at it all and what it all might mean.  A few minutes later, a tall lady in black, with a curl down each side of her pale face, came in.  Like old Tom, the driver, the Major, too, had been wondering what his sister, Miss Lucy, would think of his bringing so strange a waif home, and now, with sudden humor, he saw himself fortified.