"What's the matter?" he asked on the defensive; "what you thinking about?"

"Only Smith Crothers' factory, sir, and--and the children."

"See here, Sandford; don't you get me mixed with that----" he stopped short. At times his ability to converse with Sandy struck even him with wonder. It was when he forgot the poor figure before him, and was held by the expression in the thin face, that he let himself go.

"My mills," he continued more calmly, "are places of preparation; not--death traps."

"Yes, sir."

"It all depends on you, Sandford. I made my way up from as poor a chap as you are. I've given a lift to a good many other boys because of the boy I once was, but I never take any nonsense. I'm going to be fair with you and I expect you to be fair with me. Take things or leave them--only speak out what's in your mind and act clean. What I do for you isn't done for fun: I expect a return for everything I advance, and I take my own way to get it. While you are at school--it's school returns I want. When you go into the mills--I'll look for returns of a different kind. I'm going to give you an allowance, and it's got to do."

"Sir?"

"Oh!--I mean I'm going, after I get you on your feet, to put up a certain sum of money for you to live on; buy your clothes and get what amusement you can--along your own lines. I'm not going to pry or question you. You've got to feel your way along--it's always my method. They who stumble or run astray must learn their own lesson--not mine! I'll steady you at the start; after that you've got to learn to walk alone or go to----"

"Yes, sir!" The awful weight of responsibility was crushing Sandy as the city did--but he kept clear eyes on Markham.

"The only fun I have in life," Levi said, "is watching the outcome of my investments. You are an investment, Sandford, a flier--I call you!

You're a risk and a pick-up, but some of my biggest hauls came from fishing where others scorned to take a chance.

"Yes, sir."

"You are willing to--agree?"

"Oh! yes, sir."

"Sounds like a big chance?"

"I reckon it does, sir, but it's what I saved money for ever since I was seven. The _chance_, I mean, sir."

"Sandford, when you feel that you can--not now, but some day--I want you to tell me all about yourself."

"Yes, sir." But the thin face twitched.

"And now come down to dinner."

For a few days more the crushing city did its worst for Sandy. The noise and confusion wore upon him cruelly. The memory of the faces of the crowds was to be a nightmare to him for years to come. To one who had dwelt where few crossed his path, the close proximity of hundreds and hundreds of eyes during the day left an impression never to be forgotten. The personal contact, too, drained the small, lately gained strength, but no complaint passed the boy's lips. Matilda pitied Sandy and in her quiet, slow thoughtfulness shielded him how and as she could. Markham had business in the city and was often absorbed, but at odd moments he relaxed and sought to entertain his sister and their charge by showing them the sights of the town. It would have been impossible for him to appreciate the suffering he often, unconsciously, caused Sandy, who, left to himself, would have crouched in some quiet corner and closed his eyes against every unfamiliar thing.

Quite weakened by the experiences of the stay in New York, the boy reached at last the lovely little New England village of Bretherton at the close of a radiant autumn day. He was too weary to feel even gratitude as the carriage that awaited the party bore him away from the noise and smell of the station by the railroad. His untried senses had been taxed to the uttermost since leaving The Forge. His eyes ached; his ears throbbed. Every new odour was an added torture, and his body quivered at every touch. Sleep came to him early, however, and the small, quiet room of the Markham house which had been allotted to him was like a sacred holy of holies to the overstrained nerves. Sandy slept like the dead all that first night, but habit still swayed him, and at five o'clock he wakened suddenly and heard the stir of life out of doors. Some one was calling a dog--his dog! It was Miss Matilda, and Sandy smiled as he listened to her reasoning with Bob as was her custom. Slowly the rested nerves asserted dominion over the boy, but he did not move. He was back, in longing, among the old Lost Hollow scenes. He was too weak to adjust himself into a new environment; changes had worn out his ambition and hope. Miserably he turned upon his pillow and with a sinking of the soul yearned to take his faithful Bob with him and go back to that life which demanded no more of him than he was able to give.

But that very afternoon his future became so involved with that of another, whom he had never seen, that to turn back would have been an impossibility. He and Bob were walking over a stretch of soft, hilly land toward the autumn-tinted woods beyond, when young Lansing Hertford, the son of Levi Markham's dead sister, arrived for a consultation with his uncle. All his life Markham had hungered for something that had never been his--something peculiarly his own! His hard and struggling younger years had denied any personal luxury. He had worked his way up; supported his old father and mother and two sisters; had grimly set his face away from love and marriage, and then when wealth and opportunity came to him the desire was past. But with rigid determination he looked in other directions for compensation. At first it was his younger sister, Caroline. Like so many self-made men, the fine, dainty things of life attracted him. He had dreams of costly oil paintings and rare china, but in the meantime he devoted himself to his sisters. He and Matilda were of one mind: after their parents'

death Caroline became their only care.

Exquisite, carefully educated and beautiful, they gloried in her. They endured the loneliness of the old Bretherton home while she visited with schoolmates, or travelled abroad with new and gayer friends.

Caroline was the music of their dull lives; the art of their prosaic existences. Then the shock came when she announced her engagement to Lansing Hertford, an idle, useless son of a down-at-the-heel Southern family.

"He's no fit mate for you, Caroline," Markham said alarmedly.

"That may be, brother," the girl had replied, "but I must marry him.

You have always said one must learn his own lesson, not another's. I am ready to take the consequences. I could never get away from the sound of Lansing Hertford's voice. I hear him at night. He tells me that when temptation or weakness overpowers him he breathes my name.

So, you see, dear, I cannot escape."

"Don't be a fool, Caroline!"

Markham struggled against the sense of impotency surging around him.

"It's my lesson, dear. I'll never wince."

And she never had, even when Hertford's indifference changed to cruelty. After the birth of her child, Caroline Hertford failed rapidly and the end of her lesson came when her boy was two years old.

Markham and Matilda had desired to take the baby then, but Mrs. Olive Treadwell, Hertford's married sister, put in a protest.

"It would blight the boy's future if any gossip touched the dead mother or bereaved father; besides he is too young to change nurses or environment."

When little Lansing was seven his father died abroad under conditions shrouded with secrecy, and then it was that Olive Treadwell sought Levi Markham and by methods unknown to the simple, direct man, contrived to interest him in her nephew and his.

"There'll be a mighty big fortune some day for some one to inherit--why not Lans?" she argued to herself and began her campaign. She had grown to love the boy in her vain, worldly way; she wanted him _and_ the Markham money, and she cautiously felt her way through the years while the child was with her.

"I hear my nephew is called by your name," Levi remarked once during a call at the Boston home of the Treadwells.

"Just a childish happening. You know how simple little minds are; having no mother but me, he calls me mommy, and naturally people speak of him carelessly by my name."

"He should bear his own and seek to honour it," Markham returned with simplicity equalling a child's. Mrs. Treadwell winced. She dared not show how she resented any unkind reference to her brother, but she had always looked down upon his Yankee marriage, as she termed it, and never could understand why the plain Markhams failed to realize the honour her brother had paid them by taking Caroline for his wife.

"I must see that the misnomer is corrected," was all Mrs. Treadwell rejoined. So Lansing had passed through preparatory school and was ready for college before Markham could be brought to definite terms.

The letter from The Forge was the first proposition, and now on that September day Lansing Hertford, prepared and coached by his aunt Treadwell, presented himself at Bretherton on the two-fifty train.

"He'll probably offer you a beastly little allowance," Olive Treadwell had warned; "but I'll add to that; so accept it like a lamb. Then he'll throw Cornell to you--he has right bad taste in universities--but you must use your tact there, Lans. Tell him about your associates and how your future will be influenced by your college Frat and such things. Men like your uncle Markham are always snobs at heart."

Thus reinforced Lansing Hertford came up for judgment. He was a handsome, rollicking chap--a charming combination of his graceful father and his lovely mother--and he greeted his uncle and aunt with frank affection. Even in those days Lansing Hertford could will his emotions--or his emotions could will him--to sincerity for the time being. He had ideals and enthusiasms--he changed them often, and, as often, they changed him, but outwardly a frankness and openness were his chief attributes and had held his uncle, through the hope-deferred years, to expect big things of him.

CHAPTER IX

Lansing Treadwell, after an hour on the piazza with his aunt and uncle, followed the latter into the study and, taking the broad leather chair, faced Markham across the flat desk with candid, friendly eyes. Levi sat, as he always did when in that room, in his revolving chair; the leather one was reserved for visitors.

"Well, Lansing," he began, sternly endeavouring to obscure the hope, pride, and affection that were welling up in his heart as he looked at the boy; "you're through preparatory; have qualified for college and, after this year, are ready for your career!"

"I've done pretty well, Uncle Levi. I stand third in my class and I'm the youngest."

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"You'll be eighteen when you enter college? That's too young."

"I'm older than my years," Lansing gave a boastful laugh, then did a bungling thing. "Won't you smoke, Uncle Levi?" and he passed a handsome silver case forward; "it's a great tie between--well, chums!"