“Sister,” he said, solemnly, “here’s a little kinsman of yours.  He’s a great-great-grandson of your great-great-uncle—­Chadwick Buford.  That’s his name.  What kin does that make us?”

“Hush, brother,” said Miss Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with embarrassment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in with a glance his coarse strange clothes and his soiled hands and face and his tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark eyes.  She was really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and she did not show much interest when the Major went on to tell where he had found the lad—­for she would have thought it quite possible that he might have taken the boy out of a circus.  As for Chad, he was in awe of her at once —­which the Major noticed with an inward chuckle, for the boy had shown no awe of him.  Chad could hardly eat for shyness at supper and because everything was so strange and beautiful, and he scarcely opened his lips when they sat around the great fire, until Miss Lucy was gone to bed.  Then he told the Major all about himself and old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he hoped to come back to the Bluegrass, and go to that big college himself, and he amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the titles of two of Scott’s novels, “The Talisman” and “Ivanhoe,” and told how the school-master had read them to him.  And the Major, who had a passion for Sir Walter, tested Chad’s knowledge, and he could mention hardly a character or a scene in the two books that did not draw an excited response from the boy.

“Wouldn’t you like to stay here in the Bluegrass now and go to school?”

Chad’s eyes lighted up.

“I reckon I would; but how am I goin’ to school, now, I’d like to know?  I ain’t got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have to pay to go to school, up here.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” said the Major, and Chad wondered what he meant.  Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured out a drink of whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped: 

“Will you join me?” he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the Major to omit that formula even with a boy.

“I don’t keer if I do,” said Chad, gravely.  The Major was astounded and amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him the bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and drank it down without winking.  At the fire, the Major pulled out his chewing tobacco.  This, too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the Major in the accuracy with which he reached the fireplace thereafter with the juice, carrying off his accomplishment, too, with perfect and unconscious gravity.  The Major was nigh to splitting with silent laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.

“Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?”

“Yes, sir,” said Chad.  “Everybody makes his own licker where I come from.”