froth and foam of it
all. Neither did the young man discover in the quiet questions she
asked that Sammy was seeking to know what in all this new world he
had found that he could make his own as the thing most worth
while.

The backwoods girl had never seen that type of man to whom the
life of the city, only, is life. Ollie was peculiarly fitted by
nature to absorb quickly those things of the world, into which he
had gone, that were most different from the world he had left; and
there remained scarcely a trace of his earlier wilderness
training.

But there is that in life that lies too deep for any mere change
of environment to touch. Sammy remembered a lesson the shepherd
had given her: gentle spirit may express itself in the rude words
of illiteracy; it is not therefore rude. Ruffianism may speak the
language of learning or religion; it is ruffianism still. Strength
may wear the garb of weakness, and still be strong; and a weakling
may carry the weapons of strength, but fight with a faint heart.
So, beneath all the changes that had come to her backwoods lover,
Sammy felt that Ollie himself was unchanged. It was as though he
had learned a new language, but still said the same things.

Sammy, too, had entered a new world. Step by step, as the young
man had advanced in his schooling, and, dropping the habits and
customs of the backwoods, had conformed in his outward life to his
new environment, the girl had advanced in her education under the
careful hand of the old shepherd. Ignorant still of the false
standards and the petty ambitions that are so large a part of the
complex world, into which he had gone, she had been introduced to
a world where the life itself is the only thing worth while. She
had seen nothing of the glittering tinsel of that cheap culture
that is death to all true refinement, But in the daily
companionship of her gentle teacher, she had lived in touch with
true aristocracy, the aristocracy of heart and spirit.

Young Matt and Jim had thought that, in Sammy's education, the
bond between the girl and her lover would be strengthened. They
had thought to see her growing farther and farther from the life
of the hills; the life to which they felt that they must always
belong. But that was because Young Matt and Jim did not know the
kind of education the girl was getting.

So Ollie had come back to his old home to measure things by his
new standard; and he had come back, too, to be measured accordi