“You sutinly can plough fer a fac’!”

He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could scarcely realize that it was really he—­Chad—­Chad sitting up at the table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little negro girl—­called Thanky-ma’am because she was born on Thanksgiving day—­and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him now—­and the school-master.  Where was the school-master?  He began to be sorry that he hadn’t gone to town to try to find him.  Perhaps the Major would see him—­but how would the Major know the school-master?  He was sorry he hadn’t gone.  After dinner he started out-doors again.  Earth and sky were radiant with light.  Great white tumbling clouds were piled high all around the horizon—­and what a long length of sky it was in every direction down in the mountains, he had to look straight up, sometimes, to see the sky at all.  Blackbirds chattered in the cedars as he went to the yard gate.  The field outside was full of singing meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond.  There had been a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching his wings out to the sun.  Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with banks that were green to the very water’s edge, and Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were grazing, and on, past a little hill, where, on the next low slope, sat a great white house with big white pillars, and Chad climbed on top of the stone fence—­and sat, looking.  On the portico stood a tall man in a slouch hat and a lady in black.  At the foot of the steps a boy—­a head taller than Chad perhaps—­was rigging up a fishing-pole.  A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed.  For, the next moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his feet, floated down the slope to his ears.  He saw the negro stoop, the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the trees; and Chad sat looking after her—­thrilled, mysteriously thrilled—­mysteriously saddened, straightway.  Would he ever see her again?

The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole.  Several times voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears were, Chad did not hear them.  Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the grass.

“Snowball!” an imperious young voice called below the bank, “get that fish!”