The answer, instead of coming, got sidetracked by the train of thought
that descended upon him when he was actually face to face with his
decision. All sorts of memories came rushing pell-mell through his
brain. The cold and hungry ones were the most insistent, but he
brushed them aside.

The one he clung to longest was the earliest and most shadowy of the
lot. It was of a little white house on an Irish heath, and inside was
the biggest fireplace in the world, where crimson flames went roaring
up the big, dark chimney, and where witches and fairies held high
carnival. There was a big chair on each side the hearth, and between
them a tiny red rocker with flowers painted on the arms of it. That
was the clearest of all. There were persons in the large chairs, one a
silent Scotchman who, instinct told him, must have been his father,
and the other--oh, tricky memory that faltered when he wanted it to be
so clear!--was the maddest, merriest little mother that ever came
back to haunt a lad. By holding tight to the memory he could see that
her eyes were blue like his own, but her hair was black. He could hear
the ring of her laugh as she told him Irish stories, and the soft
drone of her voice as she sang him old Irish songs. It was she who
told him about the fairies and witches that lived up behind the
peat-flames. He remembered holding her hand and putting his cheek
against it when the goblins came too near. Then the picture would go
out, like a picture in a magic-lantern show, and sometimes Sandy could
make it come back, and sometimes he could not.

After that came a succession of memories, but none of them held the
silent father and the merry mother and the little white house on the
heath. They were of new faces and new places, of temporary homes with
relatives in Ireland and Scotland, of various schools and unceasing