Dawn that morning found Chad springing from a bed in a haystack—­ten miles from Lexington.  By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly, for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains.  Higher and higher grew the green swelling slopes, until, climbing one about noon next day, he saw the blue foothills of the Cumberland through the clear air—­and he stopped and looked long, breathing hard from pure ecstasy.  The plain-dweller never knows the fierce home hunger that the mountain-born have for hills.

Besides, beyond those blue summits were the Turners and the school-master and Jack, waiting for him, and he forgot hunger and weariness as he trod on eagerly toward them.  That night, he stayed in a mountain-cabin, and while the contrast of the dark room, the crowding children, the slovenly dress, and the coarse food was strangely disagreeable, along with the strange new shock came the thrill that all this meant hills and home.  It was about three o’clock of the fourth day that, tramping up the Kentucky River, he came upon a long, even stretch of smooth water, from the upper end of which two black boulders were thrust out of the stream, and with a keener thrill he realized that he was nearing home.  He recalled seeing those rocks as the raft swept down the river, and the old Squire had said that they were named after oxen—­“Billy and Buck.”  Opposite the rocks he met a mountaineer.

“How fer is it to Uncle Joel Turner’s?”

“A leetle the rise o’ six miles, I reckon.”

The boy was faint with weariness, and those six miles seemed a dozen.  Idea of distance is vague among the mountaineers, and two hours of weary travel followed, yet nothing that he recognized was in sight.  Once a bend of the river looked familiar, but when he neared it, the road turned steeply from the river and over a high bluff, and the boy started up with a groan.  He meant to reach the summit before he stopped to rest, but in sheer pain, he dropped a dozen paces from the top and lay with his tongue, like a dog’s, between his lips.

The top was warm, but a chill was rising from the fast-darkening shadows below him.  The rim of the sun was about to brush the green tip of a mountain across the river, and the boy rose in a minute, dragged himself on to the point where, rounding a big rock, he dropped again with a thumping heart and a reeling brain.  There it was—­old Joel’s cabin in the pretty valley below—­old Joel’s cabin—­home!  Smoke was rising from the chimney, and that far away it seemed that Chad could smell frying bacon.  There was the old barn and he could make out one of the boys feeding stock and another chopping wood—­was that the school-master?  There was the huge form of old Joel at the fence talking with a neighbor.  He was gesticulating as though angry, and the old mother came to the door as the neighbor moved away with a shuffling gait that the boy knew belonged to the Dillon breed.  Where was Jack?  Jack!  Chad sprang to his feet and went down the hill on a run.  He climbed the orchard fence, breaking the top rail in his eagerness, and as he neared the house, he gave a shrill yell.  A scarlet figure flashed like a flame out of the door, with an answering cry, and the Turners followed: