f 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