aught
the manners."

"And," Sandy steered away from the danger ground, "we'll have the
Home-school. It must be a home first; a school afterward, Sally. I
want the baby-things to have the 'lickings' of cakes and puddings in
the kitchen--it is to be a great, big, sunny kitchen! And I want them
to have bedtime stories and soft songs." Sandy's eyes, tender and
luminous, looked beyond Sally and rested on the gentle slope of Lost
Mountain. "I want them to have what every child has a right to and
which our children have never had."

Sally was thoughtfully baling the light cake into the long, shallow
tins:

"I clar' I don't know," she muttered, "how Smith Crothers is goin' to
'commodate hisself to yo'!" Then she shivered and stood upright, her
nostrils sniffing and her eyes alert like a deer in the wilds. "I don'
thought," she murmured, "dat I heard a step and saw a shadder fallin'!
Seems like the wind is changin', fetchin' chill an' storm!"

Sandy, with the superstition of The Hollow responding in his blood,
went to the window overlooking The Way. Just turning into the trail
leading up to the cabin a tall, lithe form swung in sight. Well
dressed, carrying a modern suitcase, and whistling, gayly came the
stranger. At the moment of recognition Sandy felt a cold aloofness
overpower him. He spoke, as if to convince a doubting listener: "I--I
reckon that is Lans Treadwell! Treadwell, of all people!"

But Sandy pulled himself together and went to greet his visitor with
characteristic warmth and cordiality. He believed it was only surprise
that had swayed him earlier. Lans, somehow, could not easily be fixed
into place in the rough hill life. Lans, always at his ease in Boston,
seemed oddly out of tune in Lost Hollow. But try as he might, Sandy
could not feel like himself, with Treadwell's cheerful laugh and
big-hearted, patronizing jollity resounding through the cabin. He was
too desperately and determinedly bent upon being "one of them" to be
comfortable.

"By Jove! Morley," he exclaimed, when Sandy had drawn him into the
living room; "this is a place. You've worked wonders here. I have
always wanted to see you in your family--is that your--your mother?"
For Sally Taber could be seen and heard through the half-open door
leading to the kitchen.

"No. My mother has been long dead. My father will return by evening
meal time. Come in here, Lans--you see I have unoccupied quarters----"
He led him to Levi