"Sandy! lil' Sandy! My boy!" And then the tottering old frame was gathered in the strong young arms. "Dad, dear old Dad. I've got a right good job for you!" That was all. For a few minutes the clock on the high shelf ticked so loudly that it seemed to fill the room with noise. Neither man spoke, but they clung desperately. Presently a shadow fell across the floor and Sandy turned his head. Old Bob had found his way up from The Forge and panting and wheezing began to sniff around the room. Almost blind, yet guided by that sense we cannot understand, he had sought his own and found them. With a soft cry he crouched close to the two standing by the hearth and whined piteously. Martin aroused and stood upright. "It's--it's Bob!" he cried. "Oh, Bob! Oh, Bob!" Then falteringly: "It's all right, Bob, she won't trouble you now--she's gone for good and all!" That was the only reference to Mary, and Sandy did not tell Martin of little Molly's fate for many a day. CHAPTER XVIII If one can forget the languor of the summer and the fear of the winter, a September day among the hills is an experience to set the heart singing. The fluttering birds in busy preparation for flight, the carpet of Persian colours and the subtle charm of the smell of wood smoke in the air, all combine to arouse tender thoughts and pensive desires. On such a day Cynthia Walden ran down the trail from Stoneledge and kept to the side of The Way where the leaves were thickest and the damp sweetness the richest. She wore her blue linen--it had been laundried many times since that May morning when Sandy first saw her in it; but, as Sally Taber, working under strict instructions, dried it in a pillow case--the colour was still true blue and the shrinkage slight. Many things had occurred during the past four months. Wonderful breath-taking things; things that aroused many emotions and many passions. For one thing, that brave company in the North, which Sandy represented, had actually had the audacity and daring to start operations on a splendid factory building! Smith Crothers was sullenly, silently watching operations and making, apparently, indifferent threats as to what might be expected to happen to any Hollowite--"man, woman or child"--who turned from him and his interests to the factory back of Lost Hollow. "There ain't any known head to the concern," he said one night at the County Club, "lest you count that youngster of Morley's as a head. I leave it to you--can you-all trust a Morley?" The solemn pause before Mason Hope ventured a "no" gave Crothers food for reflection. Sandy was making his way into the confidence and appreciation of his people. Slowly, to be sure, so slowly that often he sighed disheartedly, but the change in attitude was noticeable and Sandy knew it when the sun shone and Cynthia Walden deigned to speak a pleasant word to him.