There seemed to be no end to the houses and streets and people in this big town, and Chad wondered why everybody turned to look at him and smiled, and, later in the day, he came near getting into a fight with another boy who seemed to be making fun of him to his companions.  He wondered at that, too, until it suddenly struck him that he saw nobody else carrying a rifle and wearing a coonskin cap—­perhaps it was his cap and his gun.  The Major was amused and pleased, and he took a certain pride in the boy’s calm indifference to the attention he was drawing to himself.  And he enjoyed the little mystery which he and his queer little companion seemed to create as they drove through the streets.

On one corner was a great hemp factory.

Through the windows Chad could see negroes, dusty as millers, bustling about, singing as they worked.  Before the door were two men—­one on horseback.  The Major drew up a moment.

“How are you, John?  Howdye, Dick?” Both men answered heartily, and both looked at Chad—­who looked intently at them—­the graceful, powerful man on foot and the slender, wiry man with wonderful dark eyes on horseback.

“Pioneering, Major?” asked John Morgan.

“This is a namesake of mine from the mountains.  He’s come up to see the settlements.”

Richard Hunt turned on his horse.  “How do you like ’em?”

“Never seed nothin’ like ’em in my life,” said Chad, gravely.  Morgan laughed and Richard Hunt rode on with them down the street.

“Was that Captin Morgan?” asked Chad.

“Yes,” said the Major.  “Have you heard of him before?”

“Yes, sir.  A feller on the road tol’ me, if I was lookin’ fer somethin’ to do hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan.”

The Major laughed:  “That’s what everybody does.”

At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty meal; and while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the streets.

“Don’t get into trouble, my boy,” said the Major, “an’ come back here an hour or two by sun.”

Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest—­to Cheapside.  Cheapside—­at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from pioneer days to the present hour—­the platform that knew Clay, Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang.

Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, farmers, aristocrats, negroes, poor whites.  The air was a babel of cries from auctioneers—­head, shoulders, and waistband above the crowd—­and the cries of animals that were changing owners that day—­one of which might now and then be a human being.  The Major was busy, and Chad wandered where he pleased—­keeping a sharp lookout everywhere for the school-master, but though he asked