"Perhaps," she said, with the slow smile which curled the corners of her mouth so deliciously, "perhaps the yellow streak in Sandy Morley is--gold!" That was the beginning of Sandy's first great inspiration. Again and again he went to the Walden place with his wares and exchanged them for things that could be readily turned into money. Then Cynthia, from out her own generous loveliness, offered to pass over the instruction Ann Walden imparted to her, to the boy; he had before that told her of his ambition and determination to go away, and her vivid imagination was stirred. "It's not only money," Cynthia had astutely warned him--"not only money you must have, Sandy, but learning; no one can take that away from you!" With a fine air of the benefactress, Cynthia Walden took Sandy Morley's dense ignorance in charge. It was quite in keeping with the girl's idea of things as they ought to be, that she should thus illumine and guide the boy's path. She was charmingly firm but delightfully playful. She was a hard mistress but a lovely child, and the youth that was starving in her met Sandy on a level, untouched by conventions or traditions. Presently a palpitating sense of power and possession came to her. The creature who was at first but the recipient of her charity and nobility displayed traits that compelled respect and admiration. Sandy easily outstripped her after a time. His questions put her on her mettle. He never overstepped the bounds that she in her pretty childish fancy set, but he reached across them with pleading adoration and hungry mind. He seemed to urge her to get for him what he could not get for himself. And so, with the freedom of knowledge, Sandy, still keeping to his place, began to assume proportions and importance quite thrilling. Then it was that Cynthia Walden, with keenness and foresight, made her claims upon the boy. With a pretty show of condescending kindness she clutched him to her with invisible ties. For _her_ he must do thus and so! He must become a great--oh! a very great--man and give her all the credit! If he went away--_when_ he went away--he must never, never, never forget her or what she had done for him! In short, he must be her abject slave and pay homage to her all the days of his life! Sandy was quite willing to comply with all these demands; they were made in a spirit so sweet and winsome, and they were so obviously simple and just, that he rose to the call with grateful response, but with that strange something in reserve that Cynthia could not then understand or classify. It was as though Sandy had said to her: "Your slave? Yes, but no fetters or chains, thank you!"