"To Sandy, dear. Sandy, up there in Lost Hollow."

"Cynthia!"

Was she shamming? Was she striving, ignorantly, to make escape easy for them all? Was she utterly devoid of moral sense? "Moral sense!" At that Lans Treadwell paused. The glory shining from Cynthia's eyes as she stood before him, made him shrink and drop his own. The strength and purity of the high places was upon her. She was lovely and tender, but primitively firm. The law of the cities she did not know; but the law of the secret places of the hills was hers. The law of love and Love's God.

"You must take her away, Lans, dear, and be right good to her as you have been to me, big brother," the sweet voice, the unutterable tenderness and firmness more and more carried everything before them; "and let the little child have its chance--poor lil' child! And by and by--oh! a long time perhaps--when you are all mighty happy and safe, you must tell her all about it, Lans, and make her love me--a little! Tell her--it was all I could do. She will understand and be right glad."

"And you--little Cyn?" The words came in a groan.

"I? oh! I reckon this is what God meant me to do, Lans. For this he brought me down The Way, and now he will let me go home!"

Mrs. Treadwell's step outside the door brought them both back to the poor artificial environment that bound them.

"I--I cannot see her now!"

Cynthia crouched before the stern, conventional tread of the approaching woman as if she were in a place she had no right to be and Lans quickly opened a door leading from the sitting-room to a bedroom through which she might escape. And as the slight figure ran from his sight he had a sickening feeling as if, wakening from a dream of mystery and enchantment, he found himself in the midst of sordid reality. The sweet purity of the hills passed with Cynthia and the actualities of his future entered with Olive Treadwell.

"Lans," she asked sharply, looking about the room, "who was the woman who called here this morning? The woman Cynthia saw?"

"It was--Marian Spaulding."

"Good heavens! Did she talk to Cynthia?"

"She--tried to--Cynthia--could not understand."

"She will some day, though, Lans! Can you buy Marian off? I wouldn't have believed she was so vicious. Did she--lie?"

"I rather imagine she spoke only--truth."

"Well! I reckon this is about the worst confusion that was ever brought about. Without being positively bad, Lans, you've managed to create a mighty lot of trouble for a good many innocent people."

"Yes, Aunt Olive."

Lans was standing by the window looking down into the empty street.

"What are you--going to do about it?"

Then Lans turned.

"Aunt Olive, I'm going to untangle the snarl--somehow! And I'm going to stand by--Marian!"

"Marian? You talk like a madman, Lans, or a fool--and a depraved one at that. You owe everything to Cynthia--you'll be held to it, too, by law!"

"Aunt Olive," and then Lans laughed a mirthless, cold laugh, "I wonder if either you or I ever really seriously thought we could--hold Cynthia?

There is no law that could keep her here. She is of the hills. She came into our lives just long enough to purify our air and--clear my vision.

She'll go back now. We--cannot keep her!"

"Go back--to whom?"

This practical question took the smile from Lans's lips.

"To Sandy Morley, I reckon," he said grimly; "most of every noble thing I might have had--gets to him--sooner or later. He always loved her; she has just confessed to me that she loves him."

CHAPTER XXVII

There was a crust of glistening snow upon The Way; every branch of the tall, bare trees was outlined with a feathery whiteness which shone, as one looked deep into the woods, like the tracery of some fantastic spirit going where it listeth without design or purpose. From Lost Mountain the shadows had long since fled, and the gaunt peak rose clear and protectingly over The Hollow, which, somehow, had undergone a mysterious change in a few short months--or, was the change due to the magic touch of love that dwelt in the eyes of a young girl who had left the early train at The Forge and, on foot and alone, was wandering up The Way with a song of joy trembling upon her lips? So quietly and quickly had she run from the station, that Smith Crothers, standing by the door of the saloon opposite, had been the only one to notice the passenger in the long coat, rich furs, and quaint little velvet hat.

"Who's that?" he asked of the bartender inside. The man, on his knees, scrubbing the floor, rose stiffly and came to Crothers.

"Ole miss from The Holler?" he ventured vaguely.

"Ole miss--be damned!" Crothers was in an ill humour.

"Company, maybe, for the Morley cabin. It's mighty 'mazing how many folks, first and last, do tote up The Way these days. But I don't see--nobody!"

Neither did Crothers, now, for the stranger was hidden from sight.

Then he began to wonder if there really had been any one. The night's revel had been rather wilder than usual, and Crothers was not as young as he once was.

The bell of his factory was ringing, however, and he unsteadily made his way thither.

It was Cynthia who was treading lightly up The Way, but not the Cynthia who a few months before had gone so blindly to do the bidding of that inner voice of conscience.

"It was here," murmured she, standing behind a tall tree by the road, "that you fled from Crothers the night of the fire. Poor little Cyn!"

That was it! The child, Cynthia, walked beside the woman, Cynthia, now, and the woman with clear, awakened eyes--understood at last!

"Poor little Cyn! How frightened you were and how bravely you fought for--me! Or was it I who fought for you? Never mind! we have come home. Come home together, dear, you and I! How heavenly good it is for us to come--together!"

At every step the weariness and sense of peril, engendered by her experience, dropped from Cynthia. She was a woman, but Lans had left her soul to her, and she could clasp hands with the past quite confidently and joyously.

"Home! home!" The word thrilled and thrilled through her being, and on every hand she noted the touch of Sandy Morley with tender appreciation. She laughed, too, this thin, pale girl, and could Sandy have seen her then he would have thought her shining white face, set in the dark furs, more like, than ever, the dogwood bloom under the pines!

"And here I met him on The Way!" Cynthia paused at the spot where she had stood that spring morning, and saw, with a shock of disappointment, the man who had usurped her childish ideal of Sandy Morley.

"How lonely he must have been--when I did not know him! Oh! Sandy--to think I did not know you. You, with your brave, kind eyes and your tender heart!"

A tear rolled down the uplifted face. It was a tear of joy, for Cynthia was going to Sandy. From the unrest and unreality she had fled to him feeling confident that he would gather up the tangled and dropped threads of her life, and weave them, somehow, into a new and perfect pattern. She had so much to tell him! And he was there, close to her! Waiting, waiting for her to come to him and she could afford to dally by the wayside; gather up the precious memories--so like toys of the child she once had been and, by and by, she would go to him like a little girl tired of her day's wandering, and he would comfort her!

By the time Cynthia reached Theodore Starr's church all the heaviness of recent happenings was forgotten; it had no part in her thought. The church was gay in Christmas green and red holly berries. The morning sun, quite high by now, shone in the windows.

"Father!" whispered the girl as if in prayer, and then she knelt, where once her childish feet had borne her in terror, and buried her face in her hands. How well she now understood her dear, dead father! Strong in human love and sympathy, incapable of inflicting pain--even when pain would have been better and kinder than the lack of it--how like him she, the daughter, was! How she had slipped aside from the right path because weak desire to escape, or inflict pain, had been her portion. Well, she had suffered; had endured her exile; been mercifully spared from worse things, and now God had led her--home!

The unseen presence seemed to bend pityingly from the rude desk-pulpit and comfort the gentle heart of the returned wanderer.

Presently, choosing a time when the store near by was deserted, Cynthia ran from the church, across The Way, and escaped, unseen, to the trail leading up to Stoneledge. Her gay spirits returned and she sang snatches of song as she once used to sing. There was no sequence, no meaning of words, but the short sharp turns and trills were as wild and sweet as the bird notes. She tried Sandy's call--but her memory failed her there!