Sandy Part 21

Sandy lifted blazing eyes, hot with the pa.s.sion of youth.

"If she'd been in heaven and I'd been in h.e.l.l, I'd have stretched out my arms to her still!"

Something in his eyes, in his voice, in his intensity, brought the judge to his side.

"How long has this thing been going on?" he asked seriously.

"Four years!"

"Before you came here?"

"Yes."

"You followed her here?"

"Yes."

Whereupon the judge gave vent to the one profane word in his vocabulary.

Then Sandy, having confided so far, made a clean breast of it, breaking down at the end when he tried to describe Ruth's goodness and the sorrow his misery had caused her.

When it was over the judge had hold of his hand and was bestowing large, indiscriminate pats upon his head and shoulders.

"It's hard luck, Sandy; hard luck. But you must brace up, boy.

Everybody wants something in the world he can't get. We all go under, sooner or later, with some wish ungratified. Now I've always wanted--"

he pressed his fingers on his lips for a moment, then went on--"the one thing I've wanted was a son. It seemed to me there was nothing else in the world would make up to me for that lack. I had money more than enough, and health and friends; but I wanted a boy. When you came I said to Sue: 'Let's keep him a while just to see how it would feel.'

It's been worth while, Sandy; you have done me credit. It almost seemed as if the Lord didn't mean me to be disappointed, after all.

And to-day, when Mr. Moseley said you ought to have a year or two at the big university, I said: 'Why not? He's just like my own. I'll send him this year and next, and then he can come home and be a comfort to me all the rest of my days.' That's what I was sitting up to tell you, Sandy; but now--"

"And ye sha'n't be disappointed!" cried Sandy. "I'll go anywhere you say, do anything you wish. Only you wouldn't be asking me to stay here?"

"Not now, Sandy; not for a while."

"Never!--so long as she's here. I'll never bring me sorrow between her and the sun again-so help me, Heaven! And if the Lord gives me strength, I'll never see her face again, so long as I live!"

"Go to bed, boy; go to bed. You are tired out. We will ship you off to the university next week."

"Can't I be going to-morrow? Friday, then? I'd never dare trust meself over the week."

"Friday, then. But mind, no more prancing to-night; we must both go to bed."

Neither of them did so, however. Sandy went to his room and sat in his window, watching a tiny light that flickered, far across the valley, in the last bend of the river before it left the town. His muscles were tense, his nerves a-tingle, as he strained his eyes in the darkness to keep watch of the beacon. It was the last glimpse of home to a sailor who expected never to return.

Down in the sitting-room the judge was lost in the pages of a worn old copy of Tom Moore. He fingered the pages with a tenderness of other days, and lingered over the forgotten lines with a half-quizzical, half-sad smile on his lips. For he had been a lover once, and Sandy's romance stirred dead leaves in his heart that sent up a faint perfume of memory.

"Yes," he mused half aloud; "I marked that one too:

"Be it bliss to remember that thou wert the star That arose on his darkness and guided him home."

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRIALS OF AN a.s.sISTANT POSTMASTER

By all laws of mercy the post-master in a small town should be old and mentally near-sighted. Jimmy Reed was young and curious. He had even yielded to temptation once in removing a stamp on a letter from Annette Fenton to a strange suitor. Not that he wanted to delay the letter. He only wanted to know if she put tender messages under the stamp when she wrote to other people.

During the two years Sandy remained at the university, Jimmy handed his letters out of the post-office window to the judge once a week, following them half-way with his body to pick up the verbal crumbs of interest the judge might let fall while perusing them. The supremacy which Sandy had established in the base-ball days had lent him a permanent halo in the eyes of the younger boys of Clayton. "Letter from Sandy this morning," Jimmy would announce, adding somewhat anxiously, "Ain't he on the team yet?"

The judge was obliging and easy-going, and he frequently gratified Jimmy's curiosity.

"No; he's studying pretty hard these days. He says he is through with athletics."

"Does he like it up there?"

"Oh, yes, yes; I guess he likes it well enough," the judge would answer tentatively; "but I am afraid he's working too hard."

"Looks like a pity to spoil such a good pitcher," said Jimmy, thoughtfully. "I never saw him lose but one game, and that nearly killed him."

"Disappointment goes hard with him," said the judge, and he sighed.

Jimmy's chronic interest developed into acute curiosity the second winter--about the time the Nelsons returned to Clayton after a long absence.

On Thanksgiving morning he found two letters bearing his hero's handwriting. One was to Judge Hollis and one to Miss Ruth Nelson. The next week there were also two, both of which went to Miss Nelson.

After that it became a regular occurrence.

Jimmy recognized two letters a week from one person to one person as a danger-signal. His curiosity promptly rose to fever-heat. He even went so far as to weigh the letters, and roughly to calculate the number of pages in each. Once or twice he felt something hard inside, and upon submitting the envelop to his nose, he distinguished the faint fragrance of pressed flowers. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise that the duty of sorting the outgoing mail did not fall to his lot.

One added bit of information would have resulted in spontaneous combustion.

By and by letters came daily, their weight increasing until they culminated, about Christmas-time, in a special-delivery letter which bristled under the importance of its extra stamp.

The same morning the telegraph operator stopped in to ask if the Nelsons had been in for their mail. "I have a message for Miss Nelson, but I thought they started for California this morning."

"It's to-morrow morning they go," said Jimmy. "I'll send the message out. I've got a special letter for her, and they can both go out by the same boy."

When the operator had gone, Jimmy promptly unfolded the yellow slip, which was innocent of envelop.

Do not read special-delivery letter. Will explain.

S.K.

For some time he sat with the letter in one hand and the message in the other. Why had Sandy written that huge letter if he did not want her to read it? Why didn't he want her to read it? Questions buzzed about him like bees.

Large ears are said to be indicative of an inquisitive nature. Jimmy's stood out like the handles on a loving-cup. With all this explosive material bottled up in him, he felt like a torpedo-boat deprived of action.

After a while he got up and went into the drug-store next door. When he came back he made sure he was alone in the office. Then he propped up the lid of his desk with the top of his head, in a manner acquired at school, and hiding behind this improvised screen, he carefully took from his pocket a small bottle of gasolene. Pouring a little on his handkerchief, he applied it to the envelop of the special-delivery letter.