A Son of the Hills

by Harriet T. Comstock

But Cynthia, tripping light-heartedly over the gold and red leaves by The Way, sang her gayest songs and cared not a rap for the new factory or the unearthly Home-school; she was thinking of Martin Morley's cabin and the miracle that had been performed there. She was bound for the cabin. Martin would surely be away, for his "job" demanded that he should watch the men working in gangs on the new buildings. Sandy was up North. He had been summoned there by Levi Markham, who had wanted to come to The Hollow but had been held back by Sandy.

"They are taking me hard," Sandy had written; "let me have time to win them over before you come. Your money is a great drawback to me."

Then Markham wrote a characteristic command. The faithful old heart throbbed through every line and had caused poor Sandy to laugh until he cried:

Then come up North at once with reports and plans. I'm not going to let you make ducks and drakes of my hard earnings without knowing why. Matilda—isn't very strong. She's taken to counting her blessings nights instead of sleeping. By the way—have you heard anything of Treadwell? His new fangled moral van has gone smash, they say; not called by its old-fashioned name, and he's—skipped. If you hear anything of him, let me know.

Sandy had been away ten days and every day Cynthia had gone to the cabin, set it in order for Martin's comfort; revelled in the wonder of it all and feasted her soul on the books in Sandy's study.

Cynthia had slowly, reluctantly but finally given up her ideal Sandy of the past. She still kept his one letter to her and her hundred and one letters to him in an oil-cloth package in the old tree. Sometimes she stole away and read them and cried a little, softly, forlornly, as a little girl might do for a broken doll. "The Biggest of Them All" relegated to his fate, Cynthia had turned to this new son of the Hills with frank and open mind. She weighed him, considered him and found him interesting. She was sensitive to success, and this practical, good natured, kindly Sandy was decidedly successful. He was as modest and unassuming as one could desire, but he had only to wave his hand and say so-and-so and lo! the old cabin grew and became beautiful, a factory sprang up, then a dream of a school which included everyone and everything. It was like a modern fairy story—the most exciting and compelling thing one could imagine.

Slowly, cautiously, Cynthia with childish curiosity approached this new being who had arisen on her horizon. Sandy, wise in the lore of the hills, lured her as cautiously. He had subdued his own emotions. He was a man; his life had developed him; she was still a child with the radiant woman of her blindly, gropingly, looking forth from the dear, blue-gray eyes. He could wait. She would be his dream of the hills and some day she would come true and he would tell her how he had always loved her; how her pale, sweet face, under the dogwood flowers, had kept him strong and pure and unspoiled through all the yearning years. He could wait until Cynthia, the woman, awoke and—looked at him! In the meantime he worked and grew marvellously happy in his earnest, quiet way. He made a seat for her in his study window—though she never knew how carefully he had arranged it, or how desperately he had struggled to get the right colour for the cushions. "Red," Levi had suggested when approached as to window-seat coverings. "Green, a good dark tone, is a wearing shade," Matilda had informed him, but Sandy chose blue—"the shade that looks as if it sank deeper and deeper," he explained to an artistic designer, and the man had not laughed!

Sandy bought and scattered books about in his study where Cynthia might run across them at will, and sometimes during his rare moments of leisure and enjoyment she would nestle on her window seat in his study while he, his back to her, painted at his easel near the north window. At such times Cynthia liked the new Sandy almost as well as the old and was gloriously content and happy. Poetry entered her life then for the first time—poetry through books, through Sandy's modest attempts at art, and through Sandy himself.

"Let us go out windowing," he coaxed her one day when they had had a golden hour together.

"Windowing, Sandy? What is windowing?"