! Just then a
bird-note broke the mystic stillness; it filled The Hollow with
triumphant joy--it became part of the tumult of Sandy's soul compelling
the discord to lose itself in harmony.

"I must go away!" Sandy murmured as if in prayer. "I must go away!"
The new man into which he was merging felt its way cautiously through
the brightening prospect. "I must go away, now."

That was it. The years of preparation were past. Little or much, he
must take his savings and go forth! For a moment a soul loneliness
possessed him.

"Where?" he faltered in that rosy quiet that was moved and stirred by
the bird-song. "Where?" There was only one place on earth to him
beyond his mountain home--he must go to that state which recognized so
generously the yearning for knowledge he must go to Massachusetts! But
now that the hour had arrived he found his day-dreamings of the past
were as vague and unreliable as guides as his idea of heaven, that
state of mind which Marcia Lowe always insisted was here and now, or
nowhere at all!

Well, he would go to the Cup-of-Cold-Water Lady and get a more concise
conception of heaven and Massachusetts, if possible.

Sandy turned his bruised face to earth as he reached this decision;
like a condemned man on his last earthly day, he set about the doing of
the unimportant but necessary duties that lay between the dawn and the
night. With no joy did Sandy Morley anticipate his great change. He
only realized the "call," and in a subtle, compelling way he felt
himself driven by forces, quite beyond his control, to bear himself
bravely.

He filled the rusty pail with water from the spring down by the Branch;
he brought wood and lighted a fire on the ashy hearth before which, the
night before, the quarrel had waged. Having finished the homely tasks
he gathered some scraps of ash cakes and bacon together and made for
himself a breakfast, which he washed down with some thin, sour
buttermilk. After this he went to his shed and arrayed himself in a
suit of clothes, old but decent, that some one at The Forge had
charitably given him; then, packing a basket with some luscious late
peas and berries that he had been fostering for weeks in a tiny garden
patch back of the cabin, he started out on his last day's journey on
the hills for many and many a year. He had thought it out clearly
while he was performing his tasks. He would bargain and sell; he would
draw Miss Lowe out as to particulars of