"And remember," Markham warned at the end, "I want you to learn how _little_ a hundred dollars is as well as how big! One is as important as the other."
"Yes, sir," Sandy returned with a vague wonder, for he had yet to learn to think in dollars.
"Can you"--Markham considerately paused before putting the next question--"do you feel able to tell me a little more about yourself than I already know? I should like to feel that you trust me."
Sandy was stronger and better for his days in Bretherton and, never having had any great consideration shown him, he looked upon Levi Markham as a veritable God especially upraised for his guidance and protection.
"I want to tell you!" he said in a low, tense voice. Leaning forward until his arms touched the opposite side of the desk, his thin, sensitive face was nearly on a level with Markham's.
The shade at the broad window behind Sandy had not been lowered, and a very magnificent black night riddled with stars stood like a shield against which the boyish form and pale face rested. There was a crumbling fire on the hearth, and the lamp on the table was turned low. Markham, listening to the slow, earnest voice, became hypnotized by its quality and pure purpose. He felt the dreariness and hopelessness of the hard childhood, and the hate that Mary Morley had aroused seemed to the listener to be the first vivifying happening. He never took his eyes from Sandy's face from first to last. The years of labour, self-sacrifice and fixed purpose stirred him strangely, and the touch of spirit introduced into the boy's voice when he approached the end found an echo in Markham's heart.
"I'm going to learn and then go back and help them-all who can't help themselves," Sandy explained, "for _I_ know, sir. No one what does not know, could ever do it! Us-all fears strangers. I'm going to get them-all safe some day, sir. I'm going to have a right, big place to gather them in and teach them. No Hertford curse is going to kill what has called me!"
So abstracted had Levi been, so distant in thought from the Bretherton study, and his own inward trouble, that this name, falling from Sandy's lips, shocked him beyond measure.
"What--did--you--say?" he gasped; "what name did you say?"