"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.