"And what am I?" he asked, "what have you made me?"
"Oh! I did not make you, Sandy. You just were! The moonlight was streaming in through the window where the roses and honeysuckle are—it was a leafy moonlight and all ripply like dancing water. I was not afraid—I went right boldly up to—your picture, Sandy, and I knew you at once. You know in the Significant Room of my book it says there was a man in a cage; the man and his dream; and the man that cut his way through his enemies—the biggest of them all! But, oh! Sandy, mighty plain and fine I saw you like you were all three of the book folks. You were Sandy of the cage—and the cage was Lost Hollow! You were Sandy with your dream of helping us-all. Me, the po' lil' white trash in Crothers' factory—everybody! Then you were Sandy cutting your way through your enemies like the Hertfords are to your family; I heard Aunt Ann telling Ivy—and then right sudden I saw you hanging up in a gold frame with the ripply moonlight shining on you—— The Biggest of Them All!"
Sandy's eyes were brilliant and glittering; his breath came quick and hard, and to steady himself he whispered:
"I am going away—to-night!"
The vision vanished and Cynthia felt two large tears roll down her cheeks. They left no sorry stains upon the pale smoothness of the girl's skin; Cynthia's eyes could always hold a smile even when dimmed; her eyes were gray with blue tints and her straight, thick hair was the dull gold that caught and held light and shade. Some day she was going to be very handsome in an original and peculiar fashion, and Sandy unconsciously caught a glimpse of it now, and it disturbed him.
"I am going—to-night. I wonder if there is enough?"
He glanced at the box. "I have never counted it."
"Never counted it? I have counted it every week. That's because I am I, and you are you, Sandy. There's over thirty dollars."
At this Sandy gasped.
"I—reckon it will take me to Massachusetts," he said.