“Have you had any more tournaments?” asked Margaret.

“No,” said Chad, apprehensively.

“Do you remember the last thing I said to you?”

“I rickollect that better’n anything,” said Chad.

“Well, I didn’t hate you.  I’m sorry I said that,” she said gently.  Chad looked very serious.

“That’s all right,” he said.  “I seed—­I saw you on Sunday, too.”

“Did you know me?”

“I reckon I did.  And that wasn’t the fust time.”  Margaret’s eyes were opening with surprise.

“I been goin’ to church ever’ Sunday fer nothin’ else but just to see you.”  Again his tone gave her vague alarm, but she asked: 

“Why didn’t you speak to me?”

They were nearing the turnstile across the campus now, and Chad did not answer.

“Why didn’t you speak to me?”

Chad stopped suddenly, and Margaret looked quickly at him, and saw that his face was scarlet.  The little girl started and her own face flamed.  There was one thing she had forgotten, and even now she could not recall what it was—­only that it was something terrible she must not know—­old Mammy’s words when Dan was carried in senseless after the tournament.  Frightened and helpless, she shrank toward the turnstile, but Chad did not wait.  With his cap in his hand, he turned abruptly, without a sound, and strode away.

CHAPTER 16.  AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER

And yet, the next time Chad saw Margaret, she spoke to him shyly but cordially, and when he did not come near her, she stopped him on the street one day and reminded him of his promise to come and see them.  And Chad knew the truth at once—­that she had never asked her father about him, but had not wanted to know what she had been told she must not know, and had properly taken it for granted that her father would not ask Chad to his house, if there were a good reason why he should not come.  But Chad did not go even to the Christmas party that Margaret gave in town, though the Major urged him.  He spent Christmas with the Major, and he did go to a country party, where the Major was delighted with the boy’s grace and agility dancing the quadrille, and where the lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in the way of cutting pigeon’s wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the mountains.  So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for social purposes after Christmas, and had him go to Madam Blake’s dancing school, and promise to go to the next party to which he was asked.  And that Chad did—­to the big gray house on the corner, through whose widespread doors his longing eyes had watched Margaret and her friends flitting like butterflies months before.