John Arbuthnot - "The History of John Bull"

Holland Thompson - "The Age of Invention, A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest"

Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v9: Belphegor and Others"

Jeffery Farnol - "Peregrine's Progress"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come




"There he is now, Professor." And the Professor looked at Chad curiously, and
smiled and smiled again kindly when he saw the boy's grave, unsmiling eyes
fastened on him.

Then, out of the town and through the late radiant afternoon they went until
the sun sank and the carriage stopped before a gate. While the pickaninny was
opening it, another carriage went swiftly behind them, and the Major called
out cleanly to the occupants--a quiet, sombre, dignified-looking man and two
handsome boys and a little girl. "They're my neighbors, Chad," said the Major.

Not a sound did the wheels make on the thick turf as they drove toward the
old-fashioned brick house (it had no pillars), with its windows shining
through the firs and cedars that filled the yard. The Major put his hand on
the boy's shoulder:

"Well, here we are, little man."

At the yard gate there was a great barking of dogs, and a great shout of
welcome from the negroes who came forward to take the horses. To each of them
the Major gave a little package, which each darky took with shining teeth and
a laugh of delight--all looking with wonder at the curious little stranger
with his rifle and coonskin cap, until a scowl from the Major checked the
smile that started on each black face. Then the Major led Chad up a flight of
steps and into a big hall and on into a big drawing-room, where there was a
huge fireplace and a great fire that gave Chad a pang of homesickness at once.
Chad was not accustomed to taking off his hat when he entered a house in the
mountains, but he saw the Major take off his, and he dropped his own cap
quickly. The Major sank into a chair.

"Here we are, little man," he said, kindly.

Chad sat down and looked at the books, and the portraits and prints, and the
big mirrors and the carpets on the floor, none of which he had ever seen
before, and he wondered at it all and what it all might mean. A few minutes
later, a tall lady in black, with a curl down each side of her pale face, came
in. Like old Tom, the driver, the Major, too, had been wondering what his
sister, Miss Lucy, would think of his bringing so strange a waif home, and
now, with sudden humor, he saw himself fortified.

"Sister," he said, solemnly, "here's a little kinsman of yours. He's a
great-great-grandson of your great-great-uncle--Chadwick Buford. That's his
name. What kin does that make us?"

"Hush, brother," said Miss Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with
embarrassment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in with a
glance his coarse strange clothes and his soiled hands and face and his
tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark eyes. She was
really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and she did not show
much interest when the Major went on to tell where he had found the lad--for
she would have thought it quite possible that he might have taken the boy out
of a circus. As for Chad, he was in awe of her at once --which the Major
noticed with an inward chuckle, for the boy had shown no awe of him. Chad
could hardly eat for shyness at supper and because everything was so strange
and beautiful, and he scarcely opened his lips when they sat around the great
fire, until Miss Lucy was gone to bed. Then he told the Major all about
himself and old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he
hoped to come back to the Bluegrass, and go to that big college himself, and
he amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the titles of
two of Scott's novels, "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," and told how the
school-master had read them to him. And the Major, who had a passion for Sir
Walter, tested Chad's knowledge, and he could mention hardly a character or a
scene in the two books that did not draw an excited response from the boy.

"Wouldn't you like to stay here in the Bluegrass now and go to school?"

Chad's eyes lighted up.

"I reckon I would; but how am I goin' to school, now, I'd like to know? I
ain't got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have to pay
to go to school, up here."

"Well, we'll see about that," said the Major, and Chad wondered what he meant.
Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured out a drink of
whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped:

"Will you join me?" he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the Major to
omit that formula even with a boy.

"I don't keer if I do," said Chad, gravely. The Major was astounded and
amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him the
bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and drank it down
without winking. At the fire, the Major pulled out his chewing tobacco. This,
too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the Major in the accuracy with
which he reached the fireplace thereafter with the juice, carrying off his
accomplishment, too, with perfect and unconscious gravity. The Major was nigh
to splitting with silent laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.

"Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?"

"Yes, sir," said Chad. "Everybody makes his own licker where I come from."

"Don't you know it's very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"

"No, sir."

"Did nobody ever tell you it was very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"

"No, sir"--not once had Chad forgotten that.

"Well, it is."

Chad thought for a minute. "Will it keep me from gittin' to be a BIG man?"

"Yes."

Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.

"Well, I be damned," said the Major under his breath. "Are you goin' to quit?"

"Yes, sir."

Meanwhile, the old driver, whose wife lived on the next farm, was telling the
servants over there about the queer little stranger whom his master had picked
up on the road that day, and after Chad was gone to bed, the Major got out
some old letters from a chest and read them over again. Chadwick Buford was
his great-grandfather's twin brother, and not a word had been heard of him
since the two had parted that morning on the old Wilderness Road, away back in
the earliest pioneer days. So, the Major thought and thought
suppose--suppose? And at last he got up and with an uplifted candle, looked a
long while at the portrait of his grandfather that hung on the southern wall.
Then, with a sudden humor, he carried the light to the room where the boy was
in sound sleep, with his head on one sturdy arm, his hair loose on the pillow,
and his lips slightly parted and showing his white, even teeth; he looked at
the boy a long time and fancied he could see some resemblance to the portrait
in the set of the mouth and the nose and the brow, and he went back smiling at
his fancies and thinking--for the Major was sensitive to the claim of any drop
of the blood in his own veins--no matter how diluted. He was a handsome little
chap.

"How strange! How strange!"

And he smiled when he thought of the boy's last question.

"Where's YO' mammy?"

It had stirred the Major.

"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I've got no mammy--no nothin', except
Miss Lucy, and she don't live here. I'm afraid she won't be on this earth
long. Nobody lives here but me, Chad."



CHAPTER 9. MARGARET

The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a neighbor;
so Chad was left alone.

"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go anywhere
you please."

And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the
Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the
palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where
the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the
servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man
with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth. One of the
few smiles that ever came to that face came now when the overseer saw the
little mountaineer. By and by Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold
of the plough and go once around the field, and the boy handled the plough
like a veteran, so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he
came back, and said

"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"

He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could
scarcely realize that it was really he--Chad--Chad sitting up at the table
alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little negro
girl--called Thanky-ma'am because she was born on Thanksgiving day--and he
wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him now--and the
school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be sorry that he
hadn't gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major would see him--but
how would the Major know the school-master? He was sorry he hadn't gone. After
dinner he started out-doors again. Earth and sky were radiant with light.
Great white tumbling clouds were piled high all around the horizon--and what a
long length of sky it was in every direction down in the mountains, he had to
look straight up, sometimes, to see the sky at all. Blackbirds chattered in
the cedars as he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing
meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been a
light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching
his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with
banks that were green to the very water's edge, and Chad followed it on
through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out
into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were grazing, and on, past a little
hill, where, on the next low slope, sat a great white house with big white
pillars, and Chad climbed on top of the stone fence--and sat, looking. On the
portico stood a tall man in a slouch hat and a lady in black. At the foot of
the steps a boy--a head taller than Chad perhaps--was rigging up a
fishing-pole. A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to
his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next
moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and
then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his
feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little
girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the
sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white
plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the
trees; and Chad sat looking after her--thrilled, mysteriously
thrilled--mysteriously saddened, straightway. Would he ever see her again?

The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and
the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole. Several times
voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears
were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and
something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the
grass.

"Snowball!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that fish!"

On the moment Chad was alert again--somebody was fishing down there--and he
sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a woolly head and a
jet-black face peeped over the bank.

The pickaninny's eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange figure in
coonskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face almost blanched with
terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of fright, rolled back out of
sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of his own age was holding another
pole, and, hearing the little darky slide down, he said, sharply:

"Get that fish, I tell you!"

"Look dar, Mars' Dan, look dar!"

The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his little
body-servant, but with no fear.

"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.

"Fishin'?" said Chad.

"Yes," said Dan, shortly--he had shown enough curiosity and he turned his eyes
to his cork. "Get that fish, Snowball," he said again.

"I'll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked it and
came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in the other.

"Whar's yo' string?" he asked, handing the pole to the still trembling little
darky.

"I'll take it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the mud. The
fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to him, dropped on
the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the three boys, with the same
cry, scrambled for it--Snowball falling down on it and clutching it in both
his black little paws.

"Dar now!" he shrieked. "I got him!"

"Give him to me," said Dan.

"Lemme string him," said the black boy.

"Give him to me, I tell you!" And, stringing the fish, Dan took the other pole
and turned his eyes to his corks, while the pickaninny squatted behind him and
Chad climbed up and sat on the bank letting his legs dangle over. When Dan
caught a fish he would fling it with a whoop high over the bank. After the
third fish, the lad was mollified and got over his ill-temper. He turned to
Chad.

"Want to fish?"

Chad sprang down the bank quickly.

"Yes," he said, and he took the other pole out of the bank, put on a fresh
wriggling worm, and moved a little farther down the creek where there was an
eddy.

"Ketchin' any?" said a voice above the bank, and Chad looked up to see still
another lad, taller by a head than either he or Dan--evidently the boy whom he
had seen rigging a pole up at the big house on the hill.

"Oh, 'bout 'leven," said Dan, carelessly.

"Howdye!" said Chad.

"Howdye!" said the other boy, and he, too, stared curiously, but Chad had got
used to people staring at him.

"I'm goin' over the big rock," added the new arrival, and he went down the
creek and climbed around a steep little cliff, and out on a huge rock that
hung over the creek, where he dropped his hook. He had no cork, and Chad knew
that he was trying to catch catfish. Presently he jerked, and a yellow mudcat
rose to the surface, fighting desperately for his life, and Dan and Snowball
yelled crazily. Then Dan pulled out a perch.

"I got another one," he shouted. And Chad fished silently. They were making "a
mighty big fuss," he thought, "over mighty little fish." If he just had a
minnow an' had 'em down in the mountains, "I Gonnies, he'd show'em what
fishin' was!" But he began to have good luck as it was. Perch after perch he
pulled out quietly, and he kept Snowball busy stringing them until he had five
on the string. The boy on the rock was watching him and so was the boy near
him--furtively--while Snowball's admiration was won completely, and he grinned
and gurgled his delight, until Dan lost his temper again and spoke to him
sharply. Dan did not like to be beaten at anything. Pretty soon there was a
light thunder of hoofs on the turf above the bank. A black pony shot around
the bank and was pulled in at the edge of the ford, and Chad was looking into
the dancing black eyes of a little girl with a black velvet cap on her dark
curls and a white plume waving from it.

"Howdye!" said Chad, and his heart leaped curiously, but the little girl did
not answer. She, too, stared at him as all the others had done and started to
ride into the creek, but Dan stopped her sharply:

"Now, Margaret, don't you ride into that water. You'll skeer the fish."

"No, you won't," said Chad, promptly. "Fish don't keer nothin' about a hoss."
But the little girl stood still, and her brother's face flushed. He resented
the stranger's interference and his assumption of a better knowledge of fish.

"Mind your own business," trembled on his tongue, and the fact that he held
the words back only served to increase his ill-humor and make a worse outbreak
possible. But, if Chad did not understand, Snowball did, and his black face
grew suddenly grave as he sprang more alertly than ever at any word from his
little master. Meanwhile, all unconscious, Chad fished on, catching perch
after perch, but he could not keep his eyes on his cork while the little girl
was so near, and more than once he was warned by a suppressed cry from the
pickaninny when to pull. Once, when he was putting on a worm, he saw the
little girl watching the process with great disgust, and he remembered that
Melissa would never bait her own hook. All girls were alike, he "reckoned" to
himself, and when he caught a fish that was unusually big, he walked over to
her.

"I'll give this un to you," he said, but she shrank from it.

"Go 'way!" she said, and she turned her pony. Dan was red in the face by this
time. How did this piece of poor white trash dare to offer a fish to his
sister. And this time the words came out like the crack of a whip:

"S'pose you mind your own business!"

Chad started as though he had been struck and looked around quickly. He said
nothing, but he stuck the butt of his pole in the mud at once and climbed up
on the bank again and sat there, with his legs hanging over; and his own face
was not pleasant to see. The little girl was riding at a walk up the road.
Chad kept perfect silence, for he realized that he had not been minding his
own business; still he did not like to be told so and in such a way. Both
corks were shaking at the same time now.

"You got a bite," said Dan, but Chad did not move.

"You got a bite, I tell you," he said, in almost the tone he had used to
Snowball, but Chad, when the small aristocrat looked sharply around, dropped
his elbows to his knees and his chin into his hand--taking no notice. Once he
spat dexterously into the creek. Dan's own cork was going under:

"Snowball!" he cried--"jerk!" A fish flew over Chad's head. Snowball had run
for the other pole at command and jerked, too, but the fish was gone and with
it the bait.

"You lost that fish!" said the boy, hotly, but Chad sat silent--still. If he
would only say something! Dan began to think that the stranger was a coward.
So presently, to show what a great little man he was, he began to tease
Snowball, who was up on the bank unhooking the fish, of which Chad had taken
no notice.

"What's your name?"

"Snowball!" henchman, obediently.

"Louder!"

"S-n-o-w-b-a-l-l-l"

"Louder!" The little black fellow opened his mouth wide.

"S-N-O-W-B-A-L-L!" he shrieked.

"LOUDER!"

At last Chad spoke quietly.

"He can't holler no louder."

"What do you know about it? Louder!", and Dan started menacingly after the
little darky but Chad stepped between.

"Don't hit him!"

Now Dan had never struck Snowball in his life' and he would as soon have
struck his own brother--but he must not be told that he couldn't. His face
flamed and little Hotspur that he was, he drew his fist back and hit Chad full
in the chest. Chad leaped back to avoid the blow, tumbling Snowball down the
bank; the two clinched, and, while they tussled, Chad heard the other brother
clambering over the rocks, the beat of hoofs coming toward him on the turf,
and the little girl's cry:

"Don't you DARE touch my brother!"

Both went down side by side with their head just hanging over the bank, where
both could see Snowball's black wool coming to the surface in the deep hole,
and both heard his terrified shriek as he went under again. Chad was first to
his feet.

"Git a rail!" he shouted and plunged in, but Dan sprang in after him. In three
strokes, for the current was rather strong, Chad had the kinky wool in his
hand, and, in a few strokes more, the two boys had Snowball gasping on the
bank. Harry, the taller brother, ran forward to help them carry him up the
bank, and they laid him, choking and bawling, on the grass. Whip in one hand
and with the skirt of her long black riding-habit in the other, the little
girl stood above, looking on--white and frightened. The hullabaloo had reached
the house and General Dean was walking swiftly down the hill, with Snowball's
mammy, topped by a red bandanna handkerchief, rushing after him and the
kitchen servants following.

"What does this mean?" he said, sternly, and Chad was in a strange awe at
once--he was so tall, and he stood so straight, and his eye was so piercing.
Few people could lie into that eye. The little girl spoke first--usually she
does speak first, as well as last.

"Dan and--and--that boy were fighting and they pushed Snowball into the
creek."

"Dan was teasin' Snowball," said Harry the just.

"And that boy meddled," said Dan.

"Who struck first?" asked the General, looking from one boy to the other. Dan
dropped his eyes sullenly and Chad did not answer.

"I wasn't goin' to hit Snowball," said Dan.

"I thought you wus," said Chad.

"Who struck first?" repeated the General, looking at Dan now.

"That boy meddled and I hit him."

Chad turned and answered the General's eyes steadily.

"I reckon I had no business meddlin'!"

"He tried to give sister a fish."

That was unwise in Dan--Margaret's chin lifted.

"Oh," she said, "that was it, too, was it? Well--"

"I didn't see no harm givin' the little gal a fish," said Chad. "Little gal,"
indeed! Chad lost the ground he might have gained. Margaret's eyes looked all
at once like her father's.

"I'm a little GIRL, thank you."

Chad turned to her father now, looking him in the face straight and steadily.

"I reckon I had no business meddlin', but I didn't think hit was fa'r fer him
to hit the nigger; the nigger was littler, an' I didn't think hit 'as right."

"I didn't mean to hit him--I was only playin'!"

"But I THOUGHT you was goin' to hit him," said Chad. He looked at the General
again. "But I had no business meddlin'." And he picked up his old coonskin cap
from the grass to start away.

"Hold on, little man," said the General.

"Dan, haven't I told you not to tease Snowball?" Dan dropped his eyes again.

"Yes, sir."

"You struck first, and this boy says he oughtn't to have meddled, but I think
he did just right. Have you anything to say to him?"

Dan worked the toe of his
left boot into the turf for a moment "No, sir."

"Well, go up to your room and think about it awhile and see if you don't owe
somebody an apology. Hurry up now an' change your clothes.

"You'd better come up to the house and get some dry clothes for yourself, my
boy," he added to Chad. "You'll catch cold."

"Much obleeged," said Chad. "But I don't ketch cold."

He put on his old coonskin cap, and then the General recognized him.

"Why, aren't you the little boy who bought a horse from me in town the other
day?" And then Chad recognized him as the tall man who had cried "Let him have
her."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I know all about you," said the General, kindly. "You are staying with
Major Buford. He's a great friend and neighbor of mine. Now you must come up
and get some clothes, Harry!" --But Chad, though he hesitated, for he knew now
that the gentleman had practically given him the mare, interrupted, sturdily,

"No, sir, I can't go--not while he's a-feelin' hard at me."

"Very well," said the General, gravely. Chad started off on a trot and stopped
suddenly, "I wish you'd please tell that little GURL"--Chad pronounced the
word with some difficulty--"that I didn't mean nothin' callin' her a little
gal. Ever'body calls gurls gals whar I come from."

"All right," laughed the General. Chad trotted all the way home and there Miss
Lucy made him take off his wet clothes at once, though the boy had to go to
bed while they were drying, for he had no other clothes, and while he lay in
bed the Major came up and listened to Chad's story of the afternoon, which
Chad told him word for word just as it had all happened.

"You did just right, Chad," said the Major, and he went down the stairs,
chuckling:

"Wouldn't go in and get dry clothes because Dan wouldn't apologize. Dear me! I
reckon they'll have it out when they see each other again. I'd like to be on
hand, and I'd bet my bottom dollar on Chad." But they did not have it out.
Half an hour after supper somebody shouted "Hello!" at the gate, and the Major
went out and came back smiling.

"Somebody wants to see you, Chad," he said. And Chad went out and found Dan
there on the black pony with Snowball behind him.

"I've come over to say that I had no business hittin' you down at the creek,
and--" Chad interrupted him:

"That's all right," he said, and Dan stopped and thrust out his hand. The two
boys shook hands gravely.

"An' my papa says you are a man an' he wants you to come over and see us and I
want you--and Harry and Margaret. We all want you."

"All right," said Chad. Dan turned his black pony and galloped off.

"An' come soon!" he shouted back.

Out in the quarters Mammy Ailsie, old Tom's wife, was having her own say that
night.

"Ole Marse Cal Buford pickin' a piece of white trash out de gutter an' not
sayin' whar he come from an' nuttin' 'bout him. An' old Mars Henry takin' him
jus' like he was quality. My Tom say dae boy don' know who is his mammy ner
his daddy. I ain' gwine to let my little mistis play wid no sech trash, I tell
you--'deed I ain't!" And this talk would reach the drawing-room by and by,
where the General was telling the family, at just about the same hour, the
story of the horse sale and Chad's purchase of the old brood mare.