CHAPTER XI

"THE LIGHT THAT LIES"

During the summer Sandy worked faithfully to make amends for his
failure to win the scholarship. He had meekly accepted the torrent of
abuse which Mrs. Hollis poured forth, and the open disapproval shown
by the Meeches; he had winced under Martha's unspoken reproaches, and
groaned over the judge's quiet disappointment.

"You see, my boy," the judge said one day when they were alone, "I had
set my heart on taking you into the office after next year. I had
counted on the scholarship to put you through your last year at the
academy."

"It was the fool I was," cried Sandy, in deep contrition, "but if
ye'll trust me the one time more, may I die in me traces if I ever
stir out of them!"

So sincere was his desire to make amends that he asked to read law
with the judge in the evenings after his work was done. Nothing could
have pleased the judge more; he sat with his back to the lamp and his
feet on the window-sill, expounding polemics to his heart's desire.

Sandy sat in the shadow and whittled. Sometimes he did not listen at
all, but when he did, it was with an intensity of attention, an utter
absorption in the subject, that carried him straight to the heart of
the matter. Meanwhile he was unconsciously receiving a life-imprint of
the old judge's native nobility.

From the first summer Sandy had held a good position at the
post-office. His first earnings had gone to a round little surgeon on
board the steamship _America_. But since then his funds had run rather
low. What he did not lend he contributed, and the result was a chronic
state of bankruptcy.

"You must be careful with your earnings," the judge warned. "It is
not easy to live within an income."

"Easier within it than without it, sir," Sandy answered from deep
experience.

After the Lexington episode Sandy had shunned Martha somewhat; when he
did go to see her, he found she was sick in bed.

"She never was strong," said Mrs. Meech, sitting limp and disconsolate
on the porch. "Mr. Meech and I never thought to keep her this long.
The doctor says it's the beginning of the end. She's so patient it's
enough to break your heart."

Sandy went without his dinner that day, and tramped to town and back,
in the glare of the noon sun, to get her a basket of fruit. Then he
wrote her a letter so full of affection and sympathy that it brought
the tears to his own eyes as he wrote. He took the basket with the
note and