Sandy written by Alice Hegan Rice

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"He sutenly is a peart boy," she was saying. "De jedge done start him
in plumb at de foot up at de 'cademy, an' dey tell me he's ketchin' up
right along."

"Wasn't it g-grand in Judge Hollis to send him to school?" said
Annette. "Of course he's going to work for him b-between times. They
say even Mrs. Hollis is glad he is going to stay."

"'Co'se she is," said Aunt Melvy; "dere nebber was nobody come it over
Miss Sue lak he done."

"Father says he is very quick," ventured Martha Meech, a faint color
coming to her dull cheek at this unusual opportunity of descanting
upon such an absorbing subject. "Father told Judge Hollis he would
help him with his lessons, and that he thought it would be only a
little while before he was up with the other boys."

"Dad says he's a d-dandy," cried Annette. "And isn't it grand he's
going to be put on the ball team and the glee club!"

Ruth rose to break a branch laden with crimson maple-leaves. "Was he
ever here before?" she asked in puzzled tones. "I have seen him
somewhere, and I can't think where."

"Well, I'd never f-forget him," said Annette. "He's got the jolliest
face I ever saw. M-Martha says he can jump that high fence b-back of
the Hollises' without touching it. I d-drove dad's buggy clear up over
the curbstone yesterday, so he would come to the r-rescue, and he
swung on to old B-Baldy's neck like he had been a race-horse."

"But you don't know him," protested Ruth. "And, besides, he was--he
was a peddler."

"I don't care if he was," said Annette. "And if I don't know him, it's
no sign I am not g-going to."

Aunt Melvy chuckled as she rose to encourage the fire with a pair of
squeaking old bellows.

Martha looked about the room curiously. "Can you really tell what's
going to happen?" she asked timidly.

"Indeed she can," said Annette. "She told Jane Lewis that she was
g-going to have some g-good luck, and the v-very next week her aunt
died and left her a turquoise-ring!"

"Yas, chile," said Aunt Melvy, bending over the fire to light her
pipe; "I been habin' divisions for gwine on five year. Dat's what made
me think I wuz gwine git religion; but hit ain't come yit--not yit.
I'm a mourner an' a seeker." Her pipe dropped unheeded, and she gazed
with fixed eyes out of the window.

"Tell us about your visions," demanded Annette.

"Well," said Aunt Melvy, "de fust I knowed about it wuz de lizards in
my legs. I could feel 'em jus' as plain as day, dese here little green
lizards a-runnin' round inside my legs. I tole de doctor 'bout hit,
Miss Nettie; but he said 't warn't nothin' but de fidgits. I knowed
better 'n he did dat time. Dat night I had a division, an' de dream
say, 'Put on yer purple mournin'-dress an' set wid yer feet in a
barrel ob b'ilin' water till de smoke comes down de chimbly.' An' so
I done, a-settin' up dere on dat chist o' drawers all night, wid my
purple mournin'-dress on an' my feet in de b'ilin' water, an' de
lizards run away so fur dat dey ain't even stopped yit."

"Aunt Melvy, do you tell fortunes by palmistry?" asked Ruth.

"Yas'm; I reckon dat's what you call hit. I tells by de tea-leaves.
Lor', Miss Rufe, you sutenly put me in min' o' yer grandmaw! She
kerried her haid up in de air jus' lak you do, an' she wuz jus' as
putty as you is, too. We libed in de ole plantation what's done burned
down now, an' I lubed my missus--I sutenly did. When my ole man fust
come here from de country I nebber seen sech a fool. He didn't know no
more 'bout courtin' dan nothin'; but I wuz better qualified. I jus'
tole ole miss how 't wuz, an' she fixed up de weddin'. I nebber will
fergit de day we walk ober de plantation an' say we wuz married.
George he had on a brand-new pair pants dat cost two hundred an'
sixty-four dollars in Confederate money."

"Isn't the water b-boiling yet?" asked Annette, impatiently.

"So 't is, so 't is," said Aunt Melvy, lifting the kettle from the
crane. She dropped a few tea-leaves in three china cups, and then with
great solemnity and occasional guttural ejaculations poured the water
over them.

Before the last cup was filled, Annette, with a wry face, had drained
the contents of hers and held it out to Aunt Melvy.

"There are my leaves. If they don't tell about a lover with b-blue
eyes and an Irish accent, I'll never b-believe them."

Aunt Melvy bent over the cup, and her sides shook. "You gwine be a
farmer's wife," she said, chuckling at the girl's grimace. "You gwine
raise chickens an' chillun."

"Ugh!" said Annette as the other girls laughed; "are his eyes b-blue?"

Aunt Melvy pondered over the leaves. "Well, now, 'pears to me he's
sorter dark-complected an' fat, like Mr. Sid Gray," she said.

"Never!" declared Annette. "I loathe Sid."

"Tell my future!" cried Martha, pushing her cup forward eagerly.

"Dey ain't none!" cried Aunt Melvy, aghast, as she saw the few broken
leaves in the bottom of the cup. "You done drinked up yer fortune.
Dat's de sign ob early death. I gwine fix you a good-luck bag; dey say
ef you carry it all de time, hit's a cross-sign ag'in' death."

"But can't you tell me anything?" persisted Martha.

"Dey ain't nothin' to tell," repeated Aunt Melvy, "'cep'n' to warn you
to carry dat good-luck bag all de time."

"Now, mine," said Ruth, with an incredulous but curious smile.

For several moments Aunt Melvy bent over the cup in deep
consideration, and then she rose and took it to the window, with
fearsome, anxious looks at Ruth meanwhile. Once or twice she made a
sign with her fingers, and frowned anxiously.

"What is it, Aunt Melvy?" Ruth demanded. "Am I going to be an old
maid?"

"'T ain't no time to joke, chile," whispered Aunt Melvy, all the
superstition of her race embodied in her trembling figure. "What I
see, I see. Hit's de galluses what I see in de bottom ob yer cup!"

"Do you m-mean suspenders?" laughed Annette.

Aunt Melvy did, not hear her; she was looking over the cup into space,
swaying and moaning.

"To t'ink ob my ole missus' gran'chile bein' mixed up wif a gallus lak
dey hang de niggers on! But hit's dere, jus' as plain as day, de two
poles an' de cross-beam."

Ruth laughed as she looked into the cup.

"Is it for me?"

"Don't know, honey; de signs don't p'int to no one person: but hit's
in yer life, an' de shadow rests ag'in' you."

By this time Martha was at the door, urging the others to hurry. Her
face was pale and her eyes were troubled. Ruth saw her nervousness and
slipped her arm about her. "It's all in fun," she whispered.

"Of course," said Annette. "You m-mustn't mind her foolishness.
Besides, I g-got the worst of it. I'd rather die young or be hanged,
any day, than to m-marry Sid Gray."

Aunt Melvy followed them to the door, shaking her head. "I'se gwine
make you chillun some good-luck bags. De fust time de new moon holds
water I'se sholy gwine fix 'em. 'T ain't safe not to mind de signs; 't
ain't safe."

And with muttered warnings she watched them until they were lost to
view behind the hill.

CHAPTER IX

TRANSITION

The change from the road to the school-room was not without many a
struggle on Sandy's part. The new life, the new customs, and the
strange language, were baffling.

The day after the accident in the road, Mrs. Hollis had sent him to
inquire how old Mrs. Nelson was, and he had returned with the
astonishing report that she was sixty-one.

"But you didn't ask her age?" cried Mrs. Hollis, horrified.

Sandy looked perplexed. "I said what ye bid me," he declared.

Everything he did, in fact, seemed to be wrong; and everything he
said, to bring a smile. He confided many a woe to Aunt Melvy as he
sat on the kitchen steps in the evenings.

"Hit's de green rubbin' off," she assured him sympathetically. "De
same ones dat laugh at you now will be takin' off dey hats to you some
day."

"Oh, it ain't the guyin' I mind," said Sandy; "it's me wooden head.
Them little shavers that can't see a hole in a ladder can beat me
figurin'."

"You jus' keep on axin' questions," advised Aunt Melvy. "Dat's what I
always tole Rachael. Rachael's dat yaller gal up to Mrs. Nelson's. I
done raise her, an' she ain't a bit o'count. I use' ter say, 'You fool
nigger, how you ebber gwine learn nothin' effen you don't ax
questions?' An' she'd stick out her mouth an' say, 'Umph, umph; you
don't ketch me lettin' de white folks know how much sense I ain't
got.' Den she'd put on a white dress an' a white sunbonnet an' go
switchin' up de street, lookin' jus' lak a fly in a glass ob
buttermilk."

"It's the mixed-up things that bother me," said Sandy. "Mr. Moseley
was telling of us to-day how ye lost a day out of the week when ye
went round the world one way, and gained a day when ye went round the
other."

Aunt Melvy paused with the tea-towel in her hand. "Lost a day outen de
week? Where'd he say you lost it at?"

Sandy shook his head in perplexity.

"Dat's plumb foolishness," said Aunt Melvy, indignantly. "I'se
s'prised at Mr. Moseley, I sholy is. Dey sorter gits notions, dem
teachers does. When dey tells you stuff lak dat, honey, don't you pay
'em no mind."

But Sandy did "pay 'em mind." He followed Aunt Melvy's advice about
asking questions, and wrestled with each new proposition until he
mastered it. It did not take him long, moreover, to distinguish the
difference between himself and those about him. The words and phrases
that had passed current on the street seemed to ring false here. He
watched the judge covertly and took notes.

His progress at the academy was a singular succession of triumphs and
failures. His natural quickness, together with an enthusiastic
ambition to get on, enabled him soon to take his place among the boys
of his own age. But a superabundance of high spirits and an inordinate
love of fun caused many a dark entry on the debit side of his school
ledger. There were many times when he exasperated the judge to the
limit of endurance, for he was reckless and impulsive, charged to the
exploding-point with vitality, and ever and always the victim of his
last caprice; but when it came to the final issue, and the judge put a
question fairly before him, the boy was always on the side of right,
even though it proved him guilty.

At first Mrs. Hollis had been strongly opposed to his remaining on the
farm, but she soon became silent on the subject. It was a heretofore
unknown luxury to have the outside work promptly and efficiently
attended to. He possessed "the easy grace that makes a joke of toil";
and when he despatched his various chores and did even more than was
required of him, Mrs. Hollis capitulated.

It was something more, however, than his ability and service that won
her. The affection of the world, which seemed to eddy around her, as a
rule, found an exception in Sandy. His big, exuberant nature made no
distinction: he swept over her, sharp edges and all; he teased her,
coaxed her, petted her, laughed at her, turned her tirades with a bit
of blarney, and in the end won her in spite of herself.

"He's ketchin' on," reported Aunt Melvy, confidently. "I heared him
puttin' on airs in his talk. When dey stops talkin' nachel, den I
knows dey are learnin' somethin'."

CHAPTER X

WATERLOO

It was not until three years had passed and Sandy had reached his
junior year that his real achievement was put to the test.

After that harrowing experience in the Hollis driveway, he had seen
Ruth Nelson but twice. She had spent the winters at boarding-school,
and in the summers she traveled with her aunt. She was still the
divinity for whom he shaped his end, the compass that always brought
him back to the straight course. He looked upon her possible
recognition and friendship as a man looks upon his reward in heaven.
In the meantime he suffered himself to be consoled by less distant
joys.

The greatest spur he had to study was Martha Meech. She thought he
was a genius; and while he found it a bit irksome to live up to his
reputation, he made an honest effort to deserve it.

One spring afternoon the two were under the apple-trees, with their
books before them. The years that had lifted Sandy forward toward
vigor and strength and manhood had swept over Martha relentlessly,
beating out her frail strength, and leaving her weaker to combat each
incoming tide. Her straight, straw-colored hair lay smooth about her
delicate face, and in her eyes was the strained look of one who seeks
but is destined never to attain.

"Let's go over the Latin once more," she was saying patiently, "just
to make sure you understand."

"Devil a bit more!" cried Sandy, jumping up from where he lay in the
grass and tossing the book lightly from her hand; "it's the sin and
the shame to keep you poking in books, now the spring is here.
Martha, do you mind the sound of the wind in the tree-tops?"

She nodded, and he went on:

"Does it put strange words in your heart that you can't even think out
in your head? If I could be translating the wind and the river, I'd
never be minding the Latin again."

Martha looked at him half timidly.

"Sometimes, do you know, I almost think you are a poet, Sandy; you are
always thinking the things the poets write about."

"Do you, now, true?" he asked seriously, dropping down on the grass
beside her. Then he laughed. "You'll be having me writing rhymes, now,
in a minute."

"Why not?" she urged.

"I must stick to my course," he said. "I'd never be a real one. They
work for the work's sake, and I work for the praise. If I win the
scholarship, it'll be because you want me to, Martha; if I come to be
a lawyer, it's because it's the wish of the judge's heart; and if I
win out in the end, it will be for the love of some one--some one who
cares more for that than for anything else in the world."

She dropped her eyes, while he watched the flight of a song-bird as it
wheeled about overhead. Presently she opened an old portfolio and took
from it a little sketch.

"I have been trying to get up courage to show it to you all week," she
said, with a deprecatory laugh.

"It's the river," cried Sandy, "just at sundown, when the shadows are
slipping away from the bank! Martha, why didn't ye tell me? Are there
more?"

He ransacked the portfolio, drawing out sketch after sketch and
exclaiming over each. They were crude little efforts, faulty in
drawing and in color; but the spirit was there, and Sandy had a vague
instinct for the essence of things.

"I believe you're the real kind, Martha. They're crooked a bit, but
they've got the feel of the woods in 'em, all right. I can just hear
the water going over those stones."

Martha's eyes glowed at the praise. For a year she had reached
forward blindly toward some outlet for her cramped, limited existence,
and suddenly a way seemed open toward the light.

"I wanted to learn how before I showed you," she said. "I am never
going to show them to any one but you and mother and father."

"But you must go somewhere to study," cried Sandy. "It's a great
artist you'll be some day."

She shook her head. "It's not for me, Sandy. I'll always be like a
little beggar girl that peeps through the fence into a beautiful
garden. I know all the wonderful things are there, but I'll never get
to them."

"But ye will," cried Sandy, hot with sympathy. "I'll be making money
some day, and I'll send ye to the finest master in the country; and
you will be getting well and strong, and we'll go--"

Mr. Meech, shuffling up the walk toward them, interrupted. "Studying
for the examination, eh? That's right, my boy. The judge tells me
that you have a good chance to win the scholarship."

"Did he, now?" said Sandy, with shameless pleasure; "and you, Mr.
Meech, do ye think the same?"

"I certainly do," said Mr. Meech. "Anybody that can accomplish the
work you do at home, and hold your record at the academy, stands an
excellent chance."

Sandy thought so, too, but he tried to be modest. "If it'll be in me,
it will come out," he said with suppressed triumph as he swung his
books across his shoulder and started home.

Martha's eyes followed him wistfully, and she hoped for a backward
look before he turned in at the door. But he was absorbed in sailing a
broomstick across Aunt Melvy's pathway, causing her to drop her
basket and start after him in hot pursuit.

That evening the judge glanced across the table with great
satisfaction at Sandy, who was apparently buried in his Vergil. The
boy, after all, was a student; he was justifying the money and time
that had been spent upon him; he was proving a credit to his
benefactor's judgment and to his knowledge of human nature.

"Would ye mind telling me a word that rhymes with lance?" broke in
Sandy after an hour of absorbed concentration.

"Pants," suggested the judge. But he woke up in the night to wonder
again what part of Vergil Sandy had been studying.

"How about the scholarship?" he asked the next day of Mr. Moseley, the
principal of the academy.

Mr. Moseley pursed his lips and considered the matter ponderously. He
regarded it as ill befitting an instructor of youth to dispose of any
subject in words of less than three syllables.

"Your protege, Judge Hollis, is an ambiguous proposition. He possesses
invention and originality, but he is sadly lacking in sustained
concentration."

"But if he studies," persisted the judge, "you think he may win it?"

Mr. Moseley wrinkled his brows and looked as if he were solving a
problem in Euclid. "Probably," he admitted; "but there is a most
insidious enemy with which he has to contend."

"An enemy?" repeated the judge, anxiously.

"My dear sir," said Mr. Moseley, sinking his voice to husky solemnity,
"the boy is stung by the tarantula of athletics!"

It was all too true. The Ambiguous Proposition had found, soon after
reaching Clayton, that base-ball was what he had been waiting for all
his life. It was what he had been born for, what he had crossed the
ocean for, and what he would gladly have died for.

There could have been no surer proof of his growing power of
concentration than that he kept a firm grasp on his academy work
during these trying days. It was a hand-to-hand fight with the great
mass of knowledge that had been accumulating at such a cruel rate
during the years he had spent out of school. He was making gallant
progress when a catastrophe occurred.

The great ball game of the season, which was to be played in Lexington
between the Clayton team and the Lexington nine, was set for June 2.
And June 2 was the day which cruel fate--masked as the board of
trustees--had set for the academy examinations. Sandy was the only
member of the team who attended the academy, and upon him alone rested
the full agony of renunciation. His disappointment was so utterly
crushing that it affected the whole family.

"Couldn't they postpone the game?" asked the judge.

"It was the second that was the only day the Lexingtons could play,"
said Sandy, in black despair. "And to think of me sitting in the
bloomin' old school-room while Sid Gray loses the game in me place!"

For a week before the great event he lived in retirement. The one
topic of conversation in town was the ball game, and he found the
strain too great to be borne. The team was to go to Lexington on the
noon train with a mighty company of loyal followers. Every boy and
girl who could meet the modest expenses was going, save the
unfortunate victims of the junior class at the academy. Annette Fenton
had even had a dress made in the Clayton colors.

As Sandy went into town on the important day, his heart was like a
rock in his breast. There was glorious sunshine everywhere, and a cool
little undercurrent of breezes stirred every leaf into a tiny banner
of victory. Up in the square, Johnson's colored band was having a
final rehearsal, while on the court-house steps the team, glorious in
new uniforms, were excitedly discussing the plan of campaign. Little
boys shouted, and old boys left their stores to come out and give a
bit of advice or encouragement to the waiting warriors. Maidens in
crisp lawn dresses and flying ribbons fluttered about in a tremor of
anticipation.

Sandy Kilday, with his cap pulled over his eyes, went up Back street.
If he could not make the devil get behind him, he at least could get
behind the devil. Without a moment's hesitation he would have given
ten years of sober middle-age life for that one glorious day of youth
on the Lexington diamond, with the victory to be fought for, and the
grand stand to be won.

He tried not to keep step with the music--he even tried to think of
quadratic equations--as he marched heroically on to the academy. His
was the face of a Christian martyr relinquishing life for a good but
hopeless cause.

Late that afternoon Judge Hollis left his office and walked around to
the academy. He had sympathized fully with Sandy, and wanted, if
possible, to find out the result of the examination before going home.
The report of the scholarship won would reconcile him to his
disappointment.

At the academy gate he met Mr. Moseley, who greeted him with a queer
smile. They both asked the same question:

"Where's Sandy?"

As if in answer, there came a mighty shout from the street leading
down to the depot. Turning, they saw a cheering, hilarious crowd;
bright-flowered hats flashed among college caps, while shrill girlish
voices rang out with the manly ones. Carried high in the air on the
shoulders of a dozen boys, radiant with praise and success, sat the
delinquent Sandy, and the tumult below resolved itself into one mighty
cheer:

"Kilday, Kilday!
Won the day.
Hooray!"

CHAPTER XI

"THE LIGHT THAT LIES"

During the summer Sandy worked faithfully to make amends for his
failure to win the scholarship. He had meekly accepted the torrent of
abuse which Mrs. Hollis poured forth, and the open disapproval shown
by the Meeches; he had winced under Martha's unspoken reproaches, and
groaned over the judge's quiet disappointment.

"You see, my boy," the judge said one day when they were alone, "I had
set my heart on taking you into the office after next year. I had
counted on the scholarship to put you through your last year at the
academy."

"It was the fool I was," cried Sandy, in deep contrition, "but if
ye'll trust me the one time more, may I die in me traces if I ever
stir out of them!"

So sincere was his desire to make amends that he asked to read law
with the judge in the evenings after his work was done. Nothing could
have pleased the judge more; he sat with his back to the lamp and his
feet on the window-sill, expounding polemics to his heart's desire.

Sandy sat in the shadow and whittled. Sometimes he did not listen at
all, but when he did, it was with an intensity of attention, an utter
absorption in the subject, that carried him straight to the heart of
the matter. Meanwhile he was unconsciously receiving a life-imprint of
the old judge's native nobility.

From the first summer Sandy had held a good position at the
post-office. His first earnings had gone to a round little surgeon on
board the steamship _America_. But since then his funds had run rather
low. What he did not lend he contributed, and the result was a chronic
state of bankruptcy.

"You must be careful with your earnings," the judge warned. "It is
not easy to live within an income."

"Easier within it than without it, sir," Sandy answered from deep
experience.

After the Lexington episode Sandy had shunned Martha somewhat; when he
did go to see her, he found she was sick in bed.

"She never was strong," said Mrs. Meech, sitting limp and disconsolate
on the porch. "Mr. Meech and I never thought to keep her this long.
The doctor says it's the beginning of the end. She's so patient it's
enough to break your heart."

Sandy went without his dinner that day, and tramped to town and back,
in the glare of the noon sun, to get her a basket of fruit. Then he
wrote her a letter so full of affection and sympathy that it brought
the tears to his own eyes as he wrote. He took the basket with the
note and left them at her door, after which he promptly forgot all
about her. For his whole purpose in life these days, aside from
assisting the government in the distribution of mail and reading a
musty old volume of Blackstone, was learning to dance.

In ten days was the opening of the county fair, and Sandy had received
an invitation to be present at the fair hop, which was the social
excitement of the season. It was to be his introduction into society,
and he was determined to acquit himself with credit.

He assiduously practised the two-step in the back room of the
post-office when the other clerk was out for lunch; he tried elaborate
and ornate bows upon Aunt Melvy, who considered even the mildest "reel
chune" a direct communication from the devil. The moment the
post-office closed he hastened to Dr. Fenton's, where Annette was
taking him through a course of private lessons.

Dr. Fenton's house was situated immediately upon the street. Opening
the door, one passed into a small square hall where the Confederate
flag hung above a life-size portrait of General Lee. On every side
were old muskets and rusty swords, large pictures of decisive
battles, and maps of the siege of Vicksburg and the battle of Bull
Run. In the midst of this warlike atmosphere sat the unreconstructed
little doctor, wearing his gray uniform and his gray felt hat, which
he removed only when he ate and slept.

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