and dropped panting in the dust at his master's feet, without so much as an upward glance or a lift of his head for a pat of praise. As old Joel raised one foot heavily to his stirrup, he grunted, quietly: 

 "Well, I be damned." And when he was comfortably in his saddle he said again, with unction: 

 "I DO be damned. I'll just take that dawg to help drive them sheep down to town. Come on, boy." 

 Chad started joyfully, but the old mother called from the door: "Who's a-goin' to take this gal to school, I'd like to know?" 

 Old Joel pulled in his horse, straightened one leg, and looked all around—first at the Dillons, who had started away, then at Dolph and Rube, who were moving determinedly after the sheep (it was Court Day in town and they could not miss Court Day), and then at Chad, who halted. 

 "Boy," he said, "don't you want to go to school—you ought to go to school?" 

 "Yes," said Chad, obediently, though the trip to town—and Chad had never been to a town—was a sore temptation. 

 "Go on, then, an' tell the teacher I sent ye. Here, Mammy—eh, what's yo' name, boy? Oh, Mammy—Chad, here 'll take her. Take good keer o' that gal, boy, an' learn yo' a-b-abs like a man now." 

 Melissa came shyly forward from the door and Joel whistled to Jack and called him, but Jack though he liked nothing better than to drive sheep lay still, looking at Chad. 

 "Go 'long, Jack," said Chad, and Jack sprang up and was off, though he stopped again and looked back, and Chad had to tell him again to go on. In a moment dog, men, and sheep were moving in a cloud of dust around a bend in the road and little Melissa was at the gate. 

 "Take good keer of 'Lissy," said the mother from the porch, kindly; and Chad, curiously touched all at once by the trust shown him, stalked ahead like a little savage, while Melissa with her basket followed silently behind. The boy never thought of taking the basket himself: that is not the way of men with women in the hills and not once did he look around or speak on the way up the river and past the blacksmith's shop and the grist-mill just beyond the mouth of Kingdom Come; but when they arrived at the log school-house it was his turn to be shy and he hung back to let Melissa go in first. Within, there was no floor but the bare earth, no window but the cracks between the logs, and no desks 

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