"I heard about you." This was very lame, but it answered. "And you--sir?" "Oh, I am--the man from the North." "You sound like you had Southern blood." "My father and mother were Southerners." "From round this-er-way?" Again the man closed his eyes; the sweet voice and dear familiar expressions were almost more than he could bear. "Not very far away." A very little seemed enough to pacify the girl's curiosity. "I reckon the North's mighty big," she ventured presently. "It's--it's--tremendous." "Do you know anything about--Massachusetts?" "I came from there." "Oh! And is that--so mighty big?" "Not so big as the whole North. Though some still think it is." "Did you ever hear----" Cynthia paused and clasped her hands together; "of a--a boy named Sandy Morley? He went from here to there--long ago?" It was a wild question, but the day was so haunted by Sandy that the words came of their own volition. "I've met him; yes, I know him slightly." The colour rose and faded in Cynthia's face and her breath came quick and hard. "Oh! tell me about him. He came from this--Hollow! He went away years and years ago. Tell me--what has he become?" Yearning, curiosity and honest interest marked the words, but the face of the girl was a child's face, not a woman's. "He must be a right big boy now!" The man standing in The Way could not repress a smile. He saw that Cynthia Walden had in fancy enshrined the boy Sandy, but would she welcome the man Sandy had become? Fearfully, dreading the test that must be made, he drew nearer, and with lowered eyes bowed, and said: "I am Sandy Morley!" Cynthia gave a frightened glance at the tall, dark stranger in the road. She noticed, as if for the first time, his high laced boots, his corduroy trousers fastened in them, his flannel shirt and felt hat. All was fine and different, oh! so different from the ragged ugliness of the hills. That a stranger should be so clad did not interest her, but that her childhood's friend and slave should wear this livery of position shattered the beautiful portrait of the "Biggest of Them All" by one cruel blow. "No! You cannot be Sandy--not Sandy Morley." Cynthia stepped back with outstretched hands as if to ward off an attack. The light faded from Sandy Morley's face and his eyes grew dark and pleading. "I've been right homesick all the years," he faltered. "I've tried to make myself worthy to come back. Always I have dreamed of you standing as you stand now under the dogwoods, to welcome me, but now that I have come up The Way I find myself a--stranger!" Cynthia was clutching the bough of a tree for support; her eyes were strained and pathetic. "I--I do not know what I have expected," she whispered, her eyes clinging to his; "but it is this-er-way. I have made a different Sandy, and I've kept him so long in my dreams and fancies, that to see him a _man_, hurts. Oh! it hurts here!"