The pride that rang in Morley's voice was never veiled, and his native dignity was touching.
"I reckon any one might doubt it, sir, seeing him and me, but he's mine and I'm his."
"Well, well!" Markham put his hand out frankly. "I hope you're grateful."
"I am mighty grateful, sir. Mornin' an' night I kneel an' thank my God, an' day in an' out I live the poor best I can, sir, my thankfulness."
Markham gripped the thin, hard hand appreciatively. He knew more of Martin than Martin suspected, for Marcia Lowe had made it her first duty, after the Markhams' arrival, to get into touch with them. Not Sandy alone had been the theme of the little doctor's discourse; Martin's grim and self-sacrificing fight in her cabin was given in detail with other happenings in The Hollow.
"Oh! they are so big and silent and patient," Miss Lowe had explained, "they cannot for one moment comprehend their own importance in the scheme of things. I feel it a duty to shine up their virtues."
Levi was deeply touched by all he heard, and when things puzzled him he gruffly insisted that he needed a walk to calm his nerves, and always it was the little doctor who straightened the tangle.
"Miss Interpreter," Markham dubbed her, and through her he became acquainted with Smith Crothers and Crothers' mark upon recent occurrences. Of course Levi knew of Lans Treadwell's visit to the hills. Markham was not a superstitious man, but he had remarked to Matilda before they came to Lost Hollow that it "looked like the hand of God." After a séance or so at Trouble Neck, Levi changed his mind.
"I tell you, Matilda," he confided by her fireside one night after a particularly satisfying day with Sandy, "we take for granted that God Almighty's hand is the only guiding in the final analysis, but the devil gets in a twist now and again, and I guess he had more to do with Lansing's heading up here than God did. Once old Nick got the boy here he did his best to use him, too, but from what I can learn Lans spunked up at the end and showed himself more of a man than we might have expected. He played a good deal of havoc in a few short weeks, though."
Marcia Lowe had eliminated Sandy from poor Cynthia's romance or tragedy. She had put a purely commercial valuation upon Crothers' interference, for the look on Sandy's face the night he bade Cynthia good-bye haunted the little doctor and would to the last day of her life. Before it her eyes had fallen, and whenever she recalled the scene a silence fell upon her. No thought or word could express what she, too late, surmised, and her lips guarded the sanctity of Sandy's secret.