[Illustration]
Chad was waiting on the flagstones surrounded by some stray pickaninnies
when the procession stopped, and assisted the major to alight, with
as much form and ceremony as if he had been the best mounted gentleman
in the land. The saddleless fragment was then led to a supporting
fence. The judicial equipage was accorded the luxury of a shed, where
the annual contract was served with a full measure of oats--Chad's
recognition of his more exalted station.
The judge bowed gracefully and with great dignity, and with the air
of a chief justice entering the court room; then preceding the colonel
and his guests,--without a word having fallen from his lips,--he
entered a small room opening into the parlor. There he placed upon a
chair certain mysterious-looking packages, long and otherwise, one a
tin case, which he uncapped, spreading its contents upon a table.
It proved to be another and larger map than the one Chad had pored
over, and showed distinctly the boundary lines between two dots marked
"Oak" and "Rock" dividing the Carter and Barbour estates.
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