At sunrise a funeral took place. In that climate the necessity was an urgent one. Plato had dug the grave under a tree in the little clearing in the cypress swamp. It had been a favorite place of resort; there Lulu had often brought her work or book, and passed long happy hours with the slain youth. She followed his corpse to the grave in a tearless apathy, more pitiful than the most frantic grief. Lorimer took her on his arm, the servants in long single file, silent and terrified, walked behind them. The sun was shining, but the chilly wind blew the withered leaves across the still prostrate figure, as it lay upon the ground, where last it had stood in all the beauty and unreasoning passion of youth.

When the last rites were over the servants went wailing home again, their doleful, monotonous chant seeming to fill the whole spaces of air with lamentation. But neither Lorimer nor Lulu spoke a word. The girl was white and cold as marble, and absolutely irresponsive to her uncle's unusual tenderness. Evidently she had not forgiven him. And as the winter went wearily on she gradually drew more and more within her own consciousness. Lorimer seldom saw her. She was soon very ill, and kept her room entirely. He sent for eminent physicians, he surrounded her with marks of thoughtful love and care; but quietly, as a flower fades, she died.

One night she sent for him. "Uncle," she said, "I am going away very soon, now. If I have been hard and unjust to you, forgive me. And I want your promise about my sister's children; will you give me it?"

He winced visibly, and remained silent.

"There are six boys and two girls—they are poor, ignorant and unhappy. They are under very bad influences. For David's sake and my sake you must see that they are brought up right. There need be no mistakes this time; for two wrecked lives you may save eight. You will do it, uncle?"

"I will do my best, dear."

"I know you will. Send Plato to San Antonio for them at once. You will need company soon."

"Do you think you are dying, dear?"

"I know I am dying."

"And how is a' wi' you anent what is beyond death?"

She pointed with a bright smile to the New Testament by her side, and then closed her eyes wearily. She appeared so exhausted that he could press the question no further. And the next morning she had "gone away"—gone so silently and peacefully that Aunt Cassie, who was sitting by her side, knew not when she departed. He went and looked at her. The fair young face had a look austere and sorrowful, as if life had been too sore a burden for her. His anguish was great, but it was God's doing. What was there for him to say?

The charge that she had left him he faithfully kept—not very cheerfully at first, perhaps, and often feeling it to be a very heavy care; but he persevered, and the reward came. The children grew and prospered; they loved him, and he learned to love them, so much, finally, that he gave them his own name, and suffered them to call him father.

As the country settled, and little towns grew up around him, the tragedy of his earlier life was forgotten by the world, but it was ever present to his own heart; for though love and sorrow mellowed and chastened the stern creed in which he believed with all his soul, he had many an hour of spiritual agony concerning the beloved ones who had died and made no sign. Not till he got almost within the heavenly horizon did he understand that the Divine love and mercy is without limitations; and that He who could say, "Let there be light," could also say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" and the pardoned child, or ever he was aware, be come to the holy land: for—

"Down in the valley of death A cross is standing plain; Where strange and awful the shadows sleep, And the ground has a deep red stain. This cross uplifted there Forbids, with voice Divine, Our anguished hearts to break for the dead Who have died and made no sign. As they turned at length from us, Dear eyes that were heavy and dim, May have met his look, who was lifted there, May be sleeping safe in Him."



THE SEVEN WISE MEN OF PRESTON.

Let me introduce to our readers seven of the wisest men of the present century—the seven drafters and signers of the first teetotal pledge.

The movement originated in the mind of Joseph Livesey, and a short consideration of the circumstances and surroundings of his useful career will give us the best insight into the necessities and influences which gave it birth. He was born near Preston, in Lancashire, in the year 1795; the beginning of an era in English history which scarcely has a parallel for national suffering. The excitement of the French Revolution still agitated all classes, and, commercial distress and political animosities made still more terrible the universal scarcity of food and the prostration of the manufacturing business.

His father and mother died early, and he was left to the charge of his grandfather, who, unfortunately, abandoned his farm and became a cotton spinner. Lancashire men had not then been whetted by daily attrition with steam to their present keen and shrewd character, and the elder Livesey lost all he possessed. The records of cotton printing and spinning mention with honor the Messrs. Livesey, of Preston, as the first who put into practice Bell's invention of cylindrical printing of calicoes in 1785; but whether the firms are identical or not I have no certain knowledge. It shows, however, that they were a race inclined to improvements and ready to test an advance movement.

That Joseph Livesey's youth was a hard and bitter one there is no doubt. The price of flour continued for years fabulously high; so much so that wealthy people generally pledged themselves to reduce their use of it one-third, and puddings or cakes were considered on any table, a sinful extravagance. When the government was offering large premiums to farmers for raising extra quantities and detailing soldiers to assist in threshing it, poor bankrupt spinners must have had a hard struggle for a bare existence.

Indeed, education was hardly thought possible, and, though Joseph managed, "by hook or crook," to learn how to read, write and count a little, it was through difficulties and discouragements that would have been fatal to any ordinary intelligence or will.

Until he was twenty-one years of age he worked patiently at his loom, which stood in one corner of a cellar, so cold and damp that its walls were constantly wet. But he was hopeful, and even in those dark days dared to fall in love. On attaining his majority, he received a legacy of L30. Then he married the poor girl who had made brighter his hard apprenticeship, and lived happily with her for fifty years.

But the troubles that had begun before his birth—and which did not lighten until after the passing of the Reform Bill, in June, 1832—had then attained a proportion which taxed the utmost energies of both private charities and the national government.

The year of Joseph Livesey's marriage saw the passage of the Corn Laws, and the first of those famous mass meetings in Peter's Field, near Manchester, which undoubtedly molded the future temper and status of the English weavers and spinners. From one of these meetings, the following year, thousands of starving men started en masse to London. They were followed by the military and brought back for punishment or died miserably on the road, though 500 of them reached Macclesfield and a smaller number Derby.

But Livesey, though probably suffering as keenly as others, joined no body of rioters. He borrowed a sovereign and bought two cheeses; then cutting them up into small lots, he retailed them on the streets, Saturday afternoons, when the men were released from work. The profit from this small investment exceeding what it was possible for him to make at his loom, he continued the trade, and from this small beginning founded a business, and made a fortune which has enabled him to devote a long life to public usefulness and benevolence.

But his little craft must have needed skillful piloting, for his family increased rapidly during the disastrous years between 1816 and 1832; so disastrous that in 1825-26 the Bank of England was obliged to authorize the Chamber of Commerce to make loans to individuals carrying on large works of from L500 to L10,000. Bankruptcies were enormous, trade was everywhere stagnant, L60,000 were subscribed for meal and peas to feed the starving, and the government issued 40,000 articles of clothing. The quarrels between masters and spinners were more and more bitter, mills were everywhere burnt, and at Ashton in one day 30,000 "hands" turned out.

During these dreadful years every thoughtful person had noticed how much misery and ill-will was caused by the constant thronging to public houses, and temperance societies had been at work among the angry men of the working classes. Joseph Livesey had been actively engaged in this work. But these first efforts of the temperance cause were directed entirely against spirits. The use of wine and ale was considered then a necessity of life. Brewing was in most families as regular and important a duty as baking; the youngest children had their mug of ale; and clergymen were spoken of without reproach as "one," "two" or "three-bottle men."

But Joseph Livesey soon became satisfied that these half measures were doing no good at all, and in 1831 a little circumstance decided him to take a stronger position. He had to go to Blackburn to see a person on business; and, as a matter of course, whiskey was put on the table. Livesey for the first time tasted it, and was very ill in consequence. He had then a large family of boys, and both for their sakes and that of others, he resolved to halt no longer between two opinions.

He spoke at once in all the temperance meetings of the folly of partial reforms, pointed out the hundreds of relapses, and urged upon the association the duty of absolute abstinence. His zeal warmed with his efforts and he insisted that in the matter of drinking "the golden mean" was the very sin for which the Laodicean Church had been cursed.

The disputes were very angry and bitter; far more so than we at this day can believe possible, unless we take into account the universal national habits and its poetic and domestic associations with every phase of English life. But he gradually gained adherents to his views though it was not until the following year he was able to take another step forward.

It was on Thursday, August 23, 1832, that the first solemn pledge of total abstinence was taken. That afternoon Joseph Livesey, pondering the matter in his mind, saw John King pass his shop. He asked him to come in and talk the subject over with him. Before they parted Livesey asked King if he would join him in a pledge to abstain forever from all liquors; and King said he would. Livesey then wrote out a form and, laying it before King, said: "Thee sign it first, lad." King signed it, Livesey followed him, and the two men clasped hands and stood pledged to one of the greatest works humanity has ever undertaken.

A special meeting was then called, and after a stormy debate, the main part of the audience left, a small number remaining to continue the argument. But the end of it was that seven men came forward and drew up and signed the following document, which is still preserved:

"We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating quality, whether they be ale, porter, wine or ardent spirits, except as medicine.

"JOHN GRATREX, EDWARD DICKINSON, JOHN BROADBENT, JNO. SMITH, JOSEPH LIVESEY, DAVID ANDERTON, JNO. KING."

All these reformers were virtually working men, though most of them rose to positions of respect and affluence. Still the humility of the origin of the movement was long a source of contempt, and its members, within my own recollection, had the stigma of vulgarity almost in right of their convictions.

But God takes hands with good men's efforts, and the cause prospered just where it was most needed—among the operatives and "the common people." One of these latter, a hawker of fish, called Richard Turner, stood, in a very amusing and unexpected way, sponsor for the society. Richard was fluent of speech, and, if his language was the broadest patois, it was, nevertheless, of the most convincing character. He always spoke well, and, if authorized words failed him, readily coined what he needed. One night while making a very fervent speech, he said: "No half-way measures here. Nothing but the te-te total will do."

Mr. Livesey at once seized the word, and, rising, proposed it as the name of the society. The proposition was received with enthusiastic cheering, and these "root and branch" temperance men were thenceforward known as teetotalers. Richard remained all his life a sturdy advocate of the cause, and when he died, in 1846, I made one of the hundreds and thousands that crowded the streets of the beautiful town of Preston and followed him to his grave. The stone above it chronicles shortly his name and death, and the fact that he was the author of a word known now wherever Christianity and civilization are known.



MARGARET SINCLAIR'S SILENT MONEY.

"It was ma luck, Sinclair, an' I couldna win by it."

"Ha'vers! It was David Vedder's whiskey that turned ma boat tapsalteerie, Geordie Twatt."

"Thou had better blame Hacon; he turned the boat Widdershins an' what fule doesna ken that it is evil luck to go contrarie to the sun?"

"It is waur luck to have a drunken, superstitious pilot. Twatt, that Norse blood i' thy veins is o'er full o' freets. Fear God, an' mind thy wark, an' thou needna speir o' the sun what gate to turn the boat."

"My Norse blood willna stand ony Scot stirring it up, Sinclair. I come o' a mighty kind—"

"Tush, man! Mules mak' an unco' full about their ancestors having been horses. It has come to this, Geordie: thou must be laird o' theesel' before I'll trust thee again with ony craft o' mine." Then Peter Sinclair lifted his papers, and, looking the discharged sailor steadily in the face, bid him "go on his penitentials an' think things o'er a bit."

Geordie Twatt went sullenly out, but Peter was rather pleased with himself; he believed that he had done his duty in a satisfactory manner. And if a man was in a good temper with himself, it was just the kind of even to increase his satisfaction. The gray old town of Kirkwall lay in supernatural glory, the wondrous beauty of the mellow gloaming blending with soft green and rosy-red spears of light that shot from east to west, or charged upward to the zenith. The great herring fleet outside the harbor was as motionless as "a painted fleet upon a painted ocean"—the men were sleeping or smoking upon the piers—not a foot fell upon the flagged streets, and the only murmur of sound was round the public fountains, where a few women were perched on the bowl's edge, knitting and gossiping.

Peter Sinclair was, perhaps, not a man inclined to analyze such things, but they had their influence over him; for, as he drifted slowly home in his skiff, he began to pity Geordie's four motherless babies, and to wonder if he had been as patient with him as he might have been. "An' yet," he murmured, "there's the loss on the goods, an' the loss o' time, and the boat to steek afresh forbye the danger to life! Na, na, I'm no called upon to put life i' peril for a glass o' whiskey."

Then he lifted his head, and there, on the white sands, stood his daughter Margaret. He was conscious of a great thrill of pride as he looked at her, for Margaret Sinclair, even among the beautiful women of the Orcades, was most beautiful of all. In a few minutes he had fastened his skiff at a little jetty, and was walking with her over the springy heath toward a very pretty house of white stone. It was his own house, and he was proud of it also, but not half so proud of the house as of its tiny garden; for there, with great care and at great cost, he had managed to rear a few pansies, snowdrops, lilies of the valley, and other hardy English flowers. Margaret and he stooped lovingly over them, and it was wonderful to see how Peter's face softened, and how gently the great rough hands, that had been all day handling smoked geese and fish, touched these frail, trembling blossoms.

"Eh, lassie! I could most greet wi' joy to see the bonnie bit things; when I can get time I'se e'en go wi' thee to Edinburgh; I'd like weel to see such fields an' gardens an' trees as I hear thee tell on."

Then Margaret began again to describe the greenhouses, the meadows and wheat fields, the forests of oaks and beeches she had seen during her school days in Edinburgh. Peter listened to her as if she was telling a wonderful fairy story, but he liked it, and, as he cut slice after slice from his smoked goose, he enjoyed her talk of roses and apple-blossoms, and smacked his lips for the thousandth time when she described a peach, and said, "It tasted, father, as if it had been grown in the Garden of Eden."

After such conversations Peter was always stern and strict. He felt an actual anger at Adam and Eve; their transgression became a keenly personal affair, for he had a very vivid sense of the loss they had entailed upon him. The vague sense of wrong made him try to fix it, and, after a short reflection, he said in an injured tone:

"I wonder when Ronald's coming hame again?"

"Ronald is all right, father."

"A' wrong, thou means, lassie. There's three vessels waiting to be loaded, an' the books sae far ahint that I kenna whether I'm losing or saving. Where is he?"

"Not far away. He will be at the Stones of Stennis this week some time with an Englishman he fell in with at Perth."

"I wonder, now, was it for my sins or his ain that the lad has sic auld world notions? There isna a pagan altar-stane 'tween John O'Groat's an' Lambaness he doesna run after. I wish he were as anxious to serve in the Lord's temple—I would build him a kirk an' a manse for it."

"We'll be proud of Ronald yet, father. The Sinclairs have been fighting and making money for centuries: it is a sign of grace to have a scholar and a poet at last among them."

Peter grumbled. His ideas of poetry were limited by the Scotch psalms, and, as for scholarship, he asserted that the books were better kept when he used his own method of tallies and crosses. Then he remembered Geordie Twatt's misfortune, and had his little grumble out on this subject: "Boat and goods might hae been a total loss, no to speak o' the lives o' Geordie an' the four lads wi' him; an' a' for the sake o' liquor!"

Margaret looked at the brandy bottle standing at her father's elbow, and, though she did not speak, the look annoyed Peter.

"You arna to even my glass wi' his, lassie. I ken when to stop—Geordie never does."

"It is a common fault in more things than drinking, father. When Magnus Hay has struck the first blow he is quite ready to draw his dirk and strike the last one; and Paul Snackole, though he has made gold and to spare, will just go on making gold until death takes the balances out of his hands. There are few folks that in all things offend not."

She looked so noble standing before him, so fair and tall, her hair yellow as down, her eyes cool and calm and blue as night; her whole attitude so serene, assured and majestic, that Peter rose uneasily, left his glass unfinished, and went away with a very confused "good night."

In the morning the first thing he did when he reached his office, was to send for the offending sailor.

"Geordie, my Margaret says there are plenty folk as bad as thou art; so, thou'lt just see to the steeking o' the boat, an' be ready to sail her—or upset her—i' ten days again."

"I'll keep her right side up for Margaret Sinclair's sake—tell her I said that, Master."

"I'se do no promising for thee Geordie. Between wording an' working is a lang road, but Kirkwall an' Stromness kens thee for an honest lad, an' thou wilt mind this—things promised are things due."

Insensibly this act of forbearance lightened Peter's whole day; he was good-tempered with the world, and the world returned the compliment. When night came, and he watched for Margaret on the sands, he was delighted to see that Ronald was with her. The lad had come home and nothing was now remembered against him. That night it was Ronald told him fairy-stories of great cities and universities, of miles of books and pictures, of wonderful machinery and steam engines, of delicious things to eat and drink. Peter felt as if he must start southward by the next mail packet, but in the morning he thought more unselfishly.

"There are forty families depending on me sticking to the shop an' the boats, Ronald, an' I canna go pleasuring till there is ane to step into my shoes."

Ronald Sinclair had all the fair, stately beauty and noble presence of his sister, but yet there was some lack about him easier to feel than to define. Perhaps no one was unconscious of this lack except Margaret; but women have a grand invention where their idols are concerned, and create readily for them every excellency that they lack. Her own two years' study in an Edinburgh boarding-school had been very superficial, and she knew it; but this wonderful Ronald could read Homer and Horace, could play and sketch, and recite Shakespeare and write poetry. If he could have done none of these things, if he had been dull and ugly, and content to trade in fish and wool, she would still have loved him tenderly; how much more then, this handsome Antinous, whom she credited with all the accomplishments of Apollo.

Ronald needed all her enthusiastic support. He had left heavy college bills, and he had quite made up his mind that he would not be a minister and that he would be a lawyer. He could scarcely have decided on two things more offensive to his father. Only for the hope of having a minister in the family had Peter submitted to his son's continued demands for money. For this end he had bought books, and paid for all kinds of teachers and tours, and sighed over the cost of Ronald's different hobbies. And now he was not only to have a grievous disappointment, but also a great offence, for Peter Sinclair shared fully in the Arcadean dislike and distrust of lawyers, and would have been deeply offended at any one requiring their aid in any business transaction with him.

His son's proposal to be a "writer" he took almost as a personal insult. He had formed his own opinion of the profession and the opinion of any other person who would say a word in favor of a lawyer he considered of no value. Margaret had a hard task before her, that she succeeded at all was due to her womanly tact. Ronald and his father simply clashed against each other and exchanged pointed truths which hurt worse than wounds. At length, when the short Arcadean summer was almost over, Margaret won a hard and reluctant consent.

"The lad is fit for naething better, I suppose"—and the old man turned away to shed the bitterest tears of his whole life. They shocked Margaret; she was terrified at her success, and, falling humbly at his feet, she besought him to forget and forgive her importunities, and to take back a gift baptized with such ominous tears.

But Peter Sinclair, having been compelled to take such a step, was not the man to retrace it; he shook his head in a dour, hopeless way: "He couldna say 'yes' an' 'no' in a breath, an' Ronald must e'en drink as he brewed."

These struggles, so real and sorrowful to his father and sister, Ronald had no sympathy with—not that he was heartless, but that he had taught himself to believe they were the result of ignorance of the world and old-fashioned prejudices. He certainly intended to become a great man—perhaps a judge—and, when he was one of "the Lords," he had no doubt his father would respect his disobedience. He knew his father as little as he knew himself. Peter Sinclair was only Peter Sinclair's opinions incorporate; and he could no more have changed them than he could have changed the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; and the difference between a common lawyer and a "lord," in his eyes, would only have been the difference between a little oppressor and a great one.

For the first time in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her. Even if her father's objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast of the eye, and the put-by of the turning hand. But loving women are the greatest of philistines: knock their idol down daily, rob it of every beauty, cut off its hands and head, and they will still "set it up in its place," and fall down and worship it.

Undoubtedly Margaret was one of the blindest of these characters, but the world may pause before it scorns them too bitterly. It is faith of this sublime integrity which, brought down to personal experience, believes, endures, hopes, sacrifices and loves on to the end, winning finally what never would have been given to a more prudent and reasonable devotion. So, if Margaret had her doubts, she put them arbitrarily down, and sent her brother away with manifold tokens of her love—among them, with a check on the Kirkwall Bank for sixty pounds, the whole of her personal savings.

To this frugal Arcadean maid it seemed a large sum, but she hoped by the sacrifice to clear off Ronald's college debts, and thus enable him to start his new race unweighted. It was but a mouthful to each creditor, but it put them off for a time, and Ronald was not a youth inclined to "take thought" for their "to-morrow."

He had been entered for four years' study with the firm of Wilkes & Brechen, writers and conveyancers, of the city of Glasgow. Her father had paid the whole fee down, and placed in the Western Bank to his credit four hundred pounds for his four years' support. Whatever Ronald thought of the provision, Peter considered it a magnificent income, and it had cost him a great struggle to give up at once, and for no evident return, so much of his hard-earned gold. To Ronald he said nothing of this reluctance; he simply put vouchers for both transactions in his hand, and asked him to "try an' spend the siller as weel as it had been earned."

But to Margaret he fretted not a little. "Fourteen hun'red pounds a' thegither, dawtie," he said in a tearful voice. "I warked early an' late through mony a year for it; an' it is gane a' at once, though I hae naught but words an' promises for it. I ken, Margaret, that I am an auld farrant trader, but I'se aye say that it is a bad well into which are must put water."

When Ronald went, the summer went too. It became necessary to remove at once to their rock-built house in one of the narrow streets of Kirkwall. Margaret was glad of the change; her father could come into the little parlor behind the shop any time in the day and smoke his pipe beside her. He needed this consolation sorely; his son's conduct had grieved him far more deeply than he would allow, and Margaret often saw him gazing southward over the stormy Pentland Frith with a very mournful face.

But a good heart soon breaks bad fortune and Peter had a good heart, sound and sweet and true to his fellow-creatures and full of faith in God. It is true that his creed was of the very strictest and sternest; but men are always better than their theology and Margaret knew from the Scriptures chosen for their household worship that in the depth and stillness of his soul his human fatherhood had anchored fast to the fatherhood of God.

Arcadean winters are long and dreary, but no one need much pity the Arcadeans; they have learned how to make them the very festival of social life. And, in spite of her anxiety about Ronald, Margaret thoroughly enjoyed this one—perhaps the more because Captain Olave Thorkald spent two months of it with them in Kirkwall. There had been a long attachment between the young soldier and Margaret; and having obtained his commission, he had come to ask also for the public recognition of their engagement. Margaret was rarely beautiful and rarely happy, and she carried with a charming and kindly grace the full cup of her felicity. The Arcadeans love to date from a good year, and all her life afterward Margaret reckoned events from this pleasant winter.

Peter Sinclair's house being one of the largest in Kirkwall, was a favorite gathering place, and Peter took his full share in all the home-like, innocent amusements which beguiled the long, dreary nights. No one in Orkney or Zetland could recite Ossian with more passion and tenderness, and he enjoyed his little triumph over the youngsters who emulated him. No one could sing a Scotch song with more humor, and few of the lads and lassies could match Peter in a blithe foursome reel or a rattling strathspey. Some, indeed, thought that good Dr. Ogilvie had a more graceful spring and a longer breath, but Peter always insisted that his inferiority to the minister was a voluntary concession to the Dominie's superior dignity. It was, however, a rivalry that always ended in a firmer grip at parting. These little festivals, in which young and old freely mingled, cultivated to perfection the best and kindest feelings of both classes. Age mellowed to perfect sweetness in the sunshine of youthful gayety, and youth learned from age how at once to be merry and wise.

At length June arrived; and though winter lingered in spates, the song of the skylark and the thrush heralded the spring. When the dream-like voice of the cuckoo should be heard once more, Peter and Margaret had determined to take a long summer trip. They were to go first to Perth, where Captain Thorkald was stationed, and then to Glasgow and see Ronald. But God had planned another journey for Peter, even one to a "land very far off." A disease, to which he had been subject at intervals for many years, suddenly assumed a fatal character and Peter needed no one to tell him that his days were numbered.

He set his house in order, and then, going with Margaret to his summer dwelling, waited quietly. He said little on the subject, and as long as he was able, gave himself up with the delight of a child to watching the few flowers in his garden; but still one solemn, waylaying thought made these few last weeks of life peculiarly hushed and sacred. Ronald had been sent for, and the old man, with the clear prescience that sometimes comes before death, divined much and foresaw much he did not care to speak about—only that in some subtle way he made Margaret perceive that Ronald was to be cared for and watched over, and that to her this charge was committed.

Before the summer was quite over Peter Sinclair went away. In his tarrying by the eternal shore he became, as it were, purified of the body, and one lovely night, when gloaming and dawning mingled, and the lark was thrilling the midnight skies, he heard the Master call him, and promptly answered, "Here am I." Then "Death, with sweet enlargement, did dismiss him hence."

He had been considered a rich man in Orkney, and, therefore, Ronald—who had become accustomed to a Glasgow standard of wealth—was much disappointed. His whole estate was not worth over six thousand pounds; about two thousand pounds of this was in gold, the rest was invested in his houses in Kirkwall, and in a little cottage in Stromness, where Peter's wife had been born. He gave to Ronald L1800, and to Margaret L200 and the life rent of the real property. Ronald had already received L1400, and, therefore, had no cause of complaint, but somehow he felt as if he had been wronged. He was older than his sister, and the son of the house, and use and custom were not in favor of recognizing daughters as having equal rights. But he kept such thoughts to himself, and when he went back to Glasgow took with him solid proof of his sister's devotion.

It was necessary, now, for Margaret to make a great change in her life. She determined to remove to Stromness and occupy the little four-roomed cottage that had been her mother's. It stood close to that of Geordie Twatt, and she felt that in any emergency she was thus sure of one faithful friend. "A lone woman" in Margaret's position has in these days numberless objects of interest of which Margaret never dreamed. She would have thought it a kind of impiety to advise her minister, or meddle in church affairs. These simple parents attended themselves to the spiritual training of their children—there was no necessity for Sunday Schools, and they did not exist. She was not one of those women whom their friends call "beings," and who have deep and mysterious feelings that interpret themselves in poems and thrilling stories. She had no taste for philosophy or history or social science, and had been taught to regard novels as dangerously sinful books.

But no one need imagine that she was either wretched or idle. In the first place, she took life much more calmly and slowly than we do; a very little pleasure or employment went a long way. She read her Bible and helped her old servant Helga to keep the house in order. She had her flowers to care for,—and her brother and lover to write to. She looked after Geordie Twatt's little motherless lads, went to church and to see her friends, and very often had her friends to see her. It happened to be a very stormy winter, and the mails were often delayed for weeks together. This was her only trouble. Ronald's letters were more and more unsatisfactory; he was evidently unhappy and dissatisfied and heartily tired of his new study. Posts were so irregular that often their letters seemed to be playing at cross purposes. She determined as soon as spring opened to go and have a straightforward talk with him.

So the following June Geordie Twatt took her in his boat to Thurso, where Captain Thorkald was waiting for her. They had not met since Peter Sinclair's death, and that event had materially affected their prospects. Before it their marriage had been a possible joy in some far future; now there was no greater claim on her care and love than the captain's, and he urged their early marriage.

Margaret had her two hundred pounds with her, and she promised to buy her "plenishing" during her visit to Glasgow. In those days girls made their own trousseau, sewing into every garment solemn and tender hopes and joys. Margaret thought that proper attention to this dear stitching as well as proper respect for her father's memory, asked of her yet at least another year's delay; and for the present Captain Thorkald thought it best not to urge her further.

Ronald received his sister very joyfully. He had provided lodgings for her with their father's old correspondent, Robert Gorie, a tea merchant in the Cowcaddens. The Cowcaddens was then a very respectable street, and Margaret was quite pleased with her quarters. She was not pleased with Ronald, however. He avowed himself thoroughly disgusted with the law, and declared his intention of forfeiting his fee and joining his friend Walter Cashell in a manufacturing scheme.

Margaret could feel that he was all wrong, but she could not reason about a business of which she knew nothing, and Ronald took his own way. But changing and bettering are two different things, and, though he was always talking of his "good luck" and his "good bargains", Margaret was very uneasy. Perhaps Robert Gorie was partly to blame for this; his pawky face and shrewd little eyes made visible dissents to all such boasts; nor did he scruple to say, "Guid luck needs guid elbowing, Ronald, an' it is at the guid bargains I aye pause an' ponder."

The following winter was a restless, unhappy one; Ronald was either painfully elated or very dull; and, soon after the New Year, Walter Cashell fell into bad health, went to the West Indies, and left Ronald with the whole business to manage. He soon now began to come to his sister, not only for advice, but for money. Margaret believed at first that she was only supplying Walter's sudden loss, but when her cash was all gone, and Ronald urged her to mortgage her rents she resolutely shut her ears to all his plausible promises, and refused to "throw more good money after bad."

It was the first ill-blood between them, and it hurt Margaret sorely. She was glad when the fine weather came, and she could escape to her island home, for Ronald was cool to her, and said cruel things of Captain Thorkald, for whose sake he declared his sister had refused to help him.

One day, at the end of the following August, when most of the towns-people—men and women—had gone to the moss to cut the winter's peat, she saw Geordie Twatt coming toward the house. Something about his appearance troubled her, and she went to the open door and stood waiting for him.

"What is it, Geordie?"

"I am bidden to tell thee, Margaret Sinclair, to be at the Stanes o' Stennis to-night at eleven o'clock."

"Who trysts me there, Geordie, at such an hour?"

"Thy brother; but thou'lt come—yes, thou wilt."

Margaret's very lips turned white as she answered: "I'll be there—see thou art, too."

"Sure as death! If naebody spiers after me, thou needna say I was here at a', thou needna."

Margaret understood the caution, and nodded her head. She could not speak, and all day long she wandered about like a soul in a restless dream.

Fortunately, every one was weary at night, and went early to rest, and she found little difficulty in getting outside the town without notice; and one of the ponies on the common took her speedily across the moor.

Late as it was, twilight lingered over the silent moor, with its old Pictish mounds and burial places, giving them an indescribable aspect of something weird and eerie. No one could have been insensible to the mournful, brooding light and the unearthly stillness, and Margaret was trembling with a supernatural terror as she stood amid the solemn circle of gray stones and looked over the lake of Stennis and the low, brown hills of Harray.

From behind one of these gigantic pillars Ronald came toward her—Ronald, and yet not Ronald. He was dressed as a common sailor, and otherwise shamefully disguised. There was no time to soften things—he told his miserable story in a few plain words:

"His business had become so entangled that he knew not which way to turn, and, sick of the whole affair, he had taken a passage for Australia, and then forged a note on the Western Bank for L900. He had hoped to be far at sea with his ill-gotten money before the fraud was discovered, but suspicion had gathered around him so quickly, that he had not even dared to claim his passage. Then he fled north, and, fortunately, discovering Geordie's boat at Wick, had easily prevailed on him to put off at once with him."

What cowards sin makes of us! Margaret had seen this very lad face death often, among the sunken rocks and cruel surfs, that he might save the life of a ship-wrecked sailor, and now, rather than meet the creditors whom he had wronged, he had committed a robbery and was flying from the gallows.

She was shocked and stunned, and stood speechless, wringing her hands and moaning pitifully. Her brother grew impatient. Often the first result of a bitter sense of sin is to make the sinner peevish and irritable.

"Margaret," he said, almost angrily, "I came to bid you farewell, and to promise you, by my father's name! to retrieve all this wrong. If you can speak a kind word speak it, for God's sake—if not, I must go without it!"

Then she fell upon his neck, and, amid sobs and kisses, said all that love so sorely and suddenly tried could say. He could not even soothe her anguish by any promise to write, but he did promise to come back to her sooner or later with restitution in his hand. All she could do now for this dear brother was to call Geordie to her side and put him in his care; taking what consolation she could from his assurance that "he would keep him out at sea until the search was cold, and if followed carry him into some of the dangerous 'races' between the islands." If any sailor could keep his boat above water in them, she knew Geordie could; and if not—she durst follow that thought no further, but, putting her hands before her face, stood praying, while the two men pulled silently away in the little skiff that had brought them up the outlet connecting the lake of Stennis with the sea. Margaret would have turned away from Ronald's open grave less heart-broken.

It was midnight now, but her real terror absorbed all imaginary ones; she did not even call a pony, but with swift, even steps walked back to Stromness. Ere she had reached it, she had decided what was to be done, and next day she left Kirkwall in the mail packet for the mainland. Thence by night and day she traveled to Glasgow, and a week after her interview with Ronald she was standing before the directors of the defrauded bank and offering them the entire proceeds of her Kirkwall property until the debt was paid.

The bank had thoroughly respected Peter Sinclair, and his daughter's earnest, decided offer won their ready sympathy. It was accepted without any question of interest, though she could not hope to clear off the obligation in less than nine years. She did not go near any of her old acquaintances; she had no heart to bear their questions and condolences, and she had no money to stay in Glasgow at charges. Winter was coming on rapidly, but before it broke over the lonely islands she had reached her cottage in Stromness again.

There had been, of course, much talk concerning her hasty journey, but no one had suspected its cause. Indeed, the pursuit after Ronald had been entirely the bank's affair, had been committed to private detectives and had not been nearly so hot as the frightened criminal believed. His failure and flight had indeed been noticed in the Glasgow newspapers, but this information did not reach Kirkwall until the following spring, and then in a very indefinite form.

About a week after her return, Geordie Twatt came into port. Margaret frequently went to his cottage with food or clothing for the children, and she contrived to meet him there.

"Yon lad is a' right, indeed is he," he said, with an assumption of indifference.

"Oh, Geordie! where?"

"A ship going westward took him off the boat."

"Thank God! You will say naught at all, Geordie?"

"I ken naught at a' save that his father's son was i' trouble, an' trying to gie thae weary, unchancy lawyers the go-by. I was fain eneuch mesel' to balk them."

But Margaret's real trials were all yet to come. The mere fact of doing a noble deed does not absolve one often from very mean and petty consequences. Before the winter was half over she had found out how rapid is the descent from good report. The neighbors were deeply offended at her for giving up the social tea parties and evening gatherings that had made the house of Sinclair popular for more than one generation. She gave still greater offence by becoming a workingwoman, and spending her days in braiding straw into the (once) famous Orkney Tuscans, and her long evenings in the manufacture of those delicate knitted goods peculiar to the country.

It was not alone that they grudged her the money for these labors, as so much out of their own pockets—they grudged her also the time; for they had been long accustomed to rely on Margaret Sinclair for their children's garments, for nursing the sick and for help in weddings, funerals and all the other extraordinary occasions of sympathy among a primitively social people.

Little by little, all winter, the sentiment of disapproval and dislike gathered. Some one soon found out that Margaret's tenants "just sent every bawbee o' the rent-siller to the Glasgow Bank;" and this was a double offence, as it implied a distrust of her own townsfolk and institutions. If from her humble earnings she made a little gift to any common object its small amount was a fresh source of anger and contempt; for none knew how much she had to deny herself even for such curtailed gratuities.

In fact, Margaret Sinclair's sudden stinginess and indifference to her townsfolk was the common wonder and talk of every little gathering. Old friends began to either pointedly reprove her, or pointedly ignore her; and at last even old Helga took the popular tone and said, "Margaret Sinclair had got too scrimping for an auld wife like her to bide wi' langer."

Through all this Margaret suffered keenly. At first she tried earnestly to make her old friends understand that she had good reasons for her conduct; but as she would not explain these good reasons, she failed in her endeavor. She had imagined that her good conscience would support her, and that she could live very well without love and sympathy; she soon found out that it is a kind of negative punishment worse than many stripes.

At the end of the winter Captain Thorkald again earnestly pressed their marriage, saying that, "his regiment was ordered to Chelsea, and any longer delay might be a final one." He proposed also, that his father, the Udaller Thorkald of Serwick, should have charge of her Orkney property, as he understood its value and changes. Margaret wrote and frankly told him that her property was not hers for at least seven years, but that it was under good care, and he must accept her word without explanation. Out of this only grew a very unsatisfactory correspondence. Captain Thorkald went south without Margaret, and a very decided coolness separated them farther than any number of miles.

Udaller Thorkald was exceedingly angry, and his remarks about Margaret Sinclair's refusal "to trust her bit property in as guid hands as her own" increased very much the bitter feeling against the poor girl. At the end of three years the trial became too great for her; she began to think of running away from it.

Throughout these dark days she had purposely and pointedly kept apart from her old friend Dr. Ogilvie, for she feared his influence over her might tempt her to confidence. Latterly the doctor had humored her evident desire, but he had never ceased to watch over and, in a great measure, to believe in her; and, when he heard of this determination to quit Orkney forever, he came to Stromness with a resolution to spare no efforts to win her confidence.

He spoke very solemnly and tenderly to her, reminded her of her father's generosity and good gifts to the church and the poor, and said: "O, Margaret, dear lass! what good at a' will thy silent money do thee in that Day? It ought to speak for thee out o' the mouths o' the sorrowfu' an' the needy, the widows an' the fatherless—indeed it ought. And thou hast gien naught for thy Master's sake these three years! I'm fair 'shamed to think thou bears sae kind a name as thy father's."

What could Margaret do? She broke into passionate sobbing, and, when the good old man left the cottage an hour afterward there was a strange light on his face, and he walked and looked as if he had come from some interview that had set him for a little space still nearer to the angels. Margaret had now one true friend, and in a few days after this she rented her cottage and went to live with the dominie. Nothing could have so effectually reinstated her in public opinion; wherever the dominie went on a message of help or kindness Margaret went with him. She fell gradually into a quieter but still more affectionate regard—the aged, the sick and the little children clung to her hands, and she was comforted.

Her life seemed, indeed, to have wonderfully narrowed, but when the tide is fairly out, it begins to turn again. In the fifth year of her poverty there was from various causes, such an increase in the value of real estate, that her rents were nearly doubled, and by the end of the seventh year she had paid the last shilling of her assumed debt, and was again an independent woman.

It might be two years after this that she one day received a letter that filled her with joy and amazement. It contained a check for her whole nine hundred pounds back again. "The bank had just received from Ronald Sinclair, of San Francisco, the whole amount due it, with the most satisfactory acknowledgment and interest." It was a few minutes before Margaret could take in all the joy this news promised her; but when she did, the calm, well-regulated girl had never been so near committing extravagances.

She ran wildly upstairs to the dominie, and, throwing herself at his knees, cried out, amid tears and smiles: "Father! father! Here is your money! Here is the poor's money and the church's money! God has sent it back to me! Sent it back with such glad tidings!"—and surely if angels rejoice with repenting sinners, they must have felt that day a far deeper joy with the happy, justified girl.

She knew now that she also would soon hear from Ronald, and she was not disappointed. The very next day the dominie brought home the letter. Margaret took it upstairs to read it upon her knees, while the good old man walked softly up and down his study praying for her. Presently she came to him with a radiant face.

"Is it weel wi' the lad, ma dawtie?"

"Yes, father; it is very well." Then she read him the letter.

Ronald had been in New Orleans and had the fever; he had been in Texas, and spent four years in fighting Indians and Mexicans and in herding cattle. He had suffered many things, but had worked night and day, and always managed to grow a little richer every year. Then, suddenly, the word "California!" rung through the world, and he caught the echo even on the lonely southwestern prairies. Through incredible hardships he had made his way thither, and a sudden and wonderful fortune had crowned his labors, first in mining and afterward in speculation and merchandising. He said that he was indeed afraid to tell her how rich he was lest to her Arcadean views the sum might appear incredible.

Margaret let the letter fall on her lap and clasped her hands above it. Her face was beautiful. If the prodigal son had a sister she must have looked just as Margaret looked when they brought in her lost brother, in the best robe and the gold ring.

The dominie was not so satisfied. A good many things in the letter displeased him, but he kissed Margaret tenderly and went away from her. "It is a' I did this, an' I did that, an' I suffered you; there is nae word o' God's help, or o' what ither folk had to thole. I'll no be doing ma duty if I dinna set his sin afore his e'en."

The old man was little used to writing, and the effort was a great one, but he bravely made it, and without delay. In a few curt, idiomatic sentences he told Ronald Margaret's story of suffering and wrong and poverty; her hard work for daily bread; her loss of friends, of her good name and her lover, adding: "It is a puir success, ma lad, that ye dinna acknowledge God in; an' let me tell thee, thy restitution is o'er late for thy credit. I wad hae thought better o' it had thou made it when it took the last plack i' thy pouch. Out o' thy great wealth, a few hun'red pounds is nae matter to speak aboot."

But people did speak of it. In spite of our chronic abuse of human nature it is, after all, a kindly nature, and rejoices in good more than in evil. The story of Ronald's restitution is considered honorable to it, and it was much made of in the daily papers. Margaret's friends flocked round her again, saying, "I'm sorry, Margaret!" as simply and honestly as little children, and the dominie did not fail to give them the lecture on charity that Margaret neglected.

Whether the Udaller Thorkald wrote to his son anent these transactions, or whether the captain read in the papers enough to satisfy him, he never explained; but one day he suddenly appeared at Dr. Ogilvie's and asked for Margaret. He had probably good excuses for his conduct to offer; if not, Margaret was quite ready to invent for him—as she had done for Ronald—all the noble qualities he lacked. The captain was tired of military life, and anxious to return to Orkney; and, as his own and Margaret's property was yearly increasing: in value, he foresaw profitable employment for his talents. He had plans for introducing many southern improvements—for building a fine modern house, growing some of the hardier fruits and for the construction of a grand conservatory for Margaret's flowers.

It must be allowed that Captain Thorkald was a very ordinary lord for a woman like Margaret Sinclair to "love, honor and obey;" but few men would have been worthy of her, and the usual rule which shows us the noblest women marrying men manifestly their inferiors is doubtless a wise one.

A lofty soul can have no higher mission than to help upward one upon a lower plane, and surely Captain Thorkald, being, as the dominie said, "no that bad," had the fairest opportunities to grow to Margaret's stature in Margaret's atmosphere.

While these things were occurring, Ronald got Margaret's letter. It was full of love and praise, and had no word of blame or complaint in it. He noticed, indeed, that she still signed her name "Sinclair," and that she never alluded to Captain Thorkald, and the supposition that the stain on his character had caused a rupture did, for a moment, force itself upon his notice; but he put it instantly away with the reflection that "Thorkald was but a poor fellow, after all, and quite unworthy of his sister."

The very next mail-day he received the dominie's letter. He read it once, and could hardly take it in; read it again and again, until his lips blanched, and his whole countenance changed. In that moment he saw Ronald Sinclair for the first time in his life. Without a word, he left his business, went to his house and locked himself in his own room.

Then Margaret's silent money began to speak. In low upbraidings it showed him the lonely girl in that desolate land trying to make her own bread, deserted of lover and friends, robbed of her property and good name, silently suffering every extremity, never reproaching him once, not even thinking it necessary to tell him of her sufferings, or to count their cost unto him.

What is this bitterness we call remorse? This agony of the soul in all its senses? This sudden flood of intolerable light in the dark places of our hearts? This truth-telling voice which leaves us without a particle of our self-complacency? For many days Ronald could find no words to speak but these, "O, wretched man that I am!"

But at length the Comforter came as swiftly and surely and mysteriously as the accuser had come, and once more that miracle of grace was renewed—"that day Jesus was guest in the house of one who was a sinner."

Margaret's "silent money" now found a thousand tongues. It spoke in many a little feeble church that Ronald Sinclair held in his arms until it was strong enough to stand alone. It spoke in schools and colleges and hospitals, in many a sorrowful home and to many a lonely, struggling heart—and at this very day it has echoes that reach from the far West to the lonely islands beyond the stormy Pentland Firth, and the sea-shattering precipices of Duncansbay Head.

It is not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer's trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso—the old town of Thor—for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall. It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and is called "The Margaret Sinclair."



JUST WHAT HE DESERVED.

There is not in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir. The Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep feed, and far-stretching pastures where the red and white cows ruminate. The patient processes of nature breed patient minds; the gray cold climate can be read in the faces of the people, and in their hearts the seasons take root and grow; so that they have a grave character, passive, yet enduring; strong to feel and strong to act when the time is full ready for action.

Of these natural peculiarities Jean Anderson had her share. She was a Lothian lassie of many generations, usually undemonstrative, but with large possibilities of storm beneath her placid face and gentle manner. Her father was the minister of Lambrig and the manse stood in a very sequestered corner of the big parish, facing the bleak east winds, and the salt showers of the German ocean. It was sheltered by dark fir woods on three sides, and in front a little walled-in garden separated it from the long, dreary, straight line of turnpike road. But Jean had no knowledge of any fairer land; she had read of flowery pastures and rose gardens and vineyards, but these places were to her only in books, while the fields and fells that filled her eyes were her home, and she loved them.

She loved them all the more because the man she loved was going to leave them, and if Gavin Burns did well, and was faithful to her, then it was like to be that she also would go far away from the blue Lammermuirs, and the wide still spaces of the Lothians. She stood at the open door of the manse with her lover thinking of these things, but with no real sense of what pain or deprivation the thought included. She was tall and finely formed, a blooming girl, with warmly-colored cheeks, a mouth rather large and a great deal of wavy brown hair. But the best of all her beauty was the soul in her face; its vitality, its vivacity and immediate response.

However, the time of love had come to her, and though her love had grown as naturally as a sapling in a wood, who could tell what changes it would make. For Gavin Burns had been educated in the minister's house and Jean and he had studied and fished and rambled together all through the years in which Jean had grown from childhood into womanhood. Now Gavin was going to New York to make his fortune. They stepped through the garden and into the long dim road, walking slowly in the calm night, with thoughtful faces and clasped hands. There was at this last hour little left to say. Every promise known to Love had been given; they had exchanged Bibles and broken a piece of silver and vowed an eternal fidelity. So, in the cold sunset they walked silently by the river that was running in flood like their own hearts. At the little stone bridge they stopped, and leaning over the parapet watched the drumly water rushing below; and there Jean reiterated her promise to be Gavin's wife as soon as he was able to make a home for her.

"And I am not proud, Gavin," she said; "a little house, if it is filled with love, will make me happy beyond all."

They were both too hopeful and trustful and too habitually calm to weep or make much visible lament over their parting; and yet when Gavin vanished into the dark of the lonely road, Jean shut the heavy house door very slowly. She felt as if she was shutting part of herself out of the old home forever, and she was shocked by this first breaking of the continuity of life; this sharp cutting of regular events asunder. Gavin's letters were at first frequent and encouraging, but as the months went by he wrote more and more seldom. He said "he was kept so busy; he was making himself indispensable, and could not afford to be less busy. He was weary to death on the Saturday nights, and he could not bring his conscience to write anent his own personal and earthly happiness on the Sabbath day; but he was sure Jean trusted in him, whether he wrote or not; and they were past being bairns, always telling each other the love they were both so sure of."

Late in the autumn the minister died of typhoid fever, and Jean, heartbroken and physically worn out, was compelled to face for her mother and herself, a complete change of life. It had never seemed to these two women that anything could happen to the father and head of the family; in their loving hearts he had been immortal, and though the disease had run its tedious course before their eyes, his death at the last was a shock that shook their lives and their home to the very centre. A new minister was the first inevitable change, and then a removal from the comfortable manse to a little cottage in the village of Lambrig.

While this sad removal was in progress they had felt the sorrow of it, all that they could bear; and neither had dared to look into the future or to speculate as to its necessities. Jean in her heart expected Gavin would at once send for them to come to America. He had a fair salary, and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.

She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching winter. In the spring, no doubt, Gavin would have a little home ready, and they would cross the ocean to it. The mother had the same thought. As they sat on their new hearthstone, lonely and poor, they talked of this event, and if any doubts lurked unconsciously below their love and trust they talked them away, while they waited for Gavin's answer to the sorrowful letter Jean had sent him on the night of her father's burial.

It was longer in coming than they expected. For a week they saw the postman pass their door with an indifference that seemed cruel; for a week Jean made new excuses and tried to hold up her mother's heart, while her own was sinking lower and lower. Then one morning the looked-for answer came. Jean fled to a room apart to read it alone; Mrs. Anderson sat down and waited, with dropped eyes and hands tightly clasped. She knew, before Jean said a word, that the letter had disappointed her. She had remained alone too long. If all had been as they hoped the mother was certain Jean would not have deferred the good tidings a moment. But a quarter of an hour had passed before Jean came to her side, and then when she lifted her eyes she saw that her daughter had been weeping.

"It is a disappointment, Jean, I see," she said sadly. "Never mind, dearie."

"Yes, mother; Gavin has failed us."

"We have been two foolish women, Jean. Oh, my dear lassie, we should have lippened to God, and He would not have disappointed us! What does Gavin Burns say?"

"It is what he does not say, that hurts me, mother. I may as well tell you the whole truth. When he heard how ill father was, he wrote to me, as if he had foreseen what was to happen. He said, 'there will be a new minister and a break-up of the old home, and you must come at once to your new home here. I am the one to care for you when your father is gone away; and what does it matter under what sun or sky if we are but together?' So, then, mother, when the worst had come to us I wrote with a free heart to Gavin. I said, 'I will come to you gladly, Gavin, but you know well that my mother is very dear to me, and where I am there she also must be.' And he says, in this letter, that it is me he is wanting, and that you have a brother in Glasgow that is unmarried and who will be willing, no doubt, to have you keep his house for him. There is a wale of fine words about it, mother, but they come to just this, and no more—Gavin is willing to care for me, but not for you and I will not trust myself with a man that cannot love you for my sake. We will stay together, mammy darling! Whatever comes or goes we will stay together. The man isna born that can part us two!"

"He is your lover, Jean. A girl must stick to her lover."

"You are my mother. I am bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh and love of your love. May God forsake me when I forsake you!"

She had thrown herself at her mother's knees and was clasping and kissing the sad face so dear to her, as she fervently uttered the last words. And the mother was profoundly touched by her child's devotion. She drew her close to her heart, and said firmly:

"No! No, my dearie! What could we two do for ourselves? And I'm loth to part you and Gavin. I simply cannot take the sacrifice, you so lovingly offer me. I will write to my brother David. Gavin isna far wrong there; David is a very close man, but he willna see his sister suffer, there is no fear of that."

"It is Jean that will not see you suffer."

"But the bite and the sup, Jean? How are we to get them?"

"I can make my own dresses and cloaks, so then I can make dresses and cloaks for other people. I shall send out a card to the ladies near-by and put an advertisement in the Haddington newspaper, and God can make my needle sharp enough for the battle. Don't cry, mother! Oh, darling, don't cry! We have God and each other, and none can call us desolate."

"But you will break your heart, Jean. You canna help it. And I canna take your love and happiness to brighten my old age. It isna right. I'll not do it. You must go to Gavin. I will go to my brother David."

"I will not break my heart, mother. I will not shed a tear for the false, mean lad, that you were so kind to for fourteen years, when there was no one else to love him. Aye, I know he paid for his board and schooling, but he never could pay for the mother-love you gave him, just because he was motherless. And who has more right to have their life brightened by my love than you have? Beside, it is my happiness to brighten it, and so, what will you say against it? And I will not go to Gavin. Not one step. If he wants me now, he will come for me, and for you, too. This is sure as death! Oh, mammy! Mammy, darling, a false lad shall not part us! Never! Never! Never!"

"Jean! Jean! What will I say at all"

"What would my father say, if he was here this minute? He would say, 'you are right, Jean! And God bless you, Jean! And you may be sure that it is all for the best, Jean! So take the right road with a glad heart, Jean!' That is what father would say. And I will never do anything to prevent me looking him straight in the face when we meet again. Even in heaven I shall want him to smile into my eyes and say, 'Well done, Jean!'"

CHAPTER II.

Jean's plans for the future were humble and reasonable enough to insure them some measure of success, and the dreaded winter passed not uncomfortably away. Then in the summer Uncle David Nicoll came to Lambrig and boarded with his sister, paying a pound a week, and giving her, on his departure, a five-pound note to help the next winter's expenses. This order of things went on without change or intermission for five years, and the little cottage gradually gathered in its clean, sweet rooms, many articles of simple use and beauty. Mrs. Anderson took entire charge of the housekeeping. Jean's needle flew swiftly from morning to night, and though the girl had her share of the humiliations and annoyances incident to her position, these did not interfere with the cheerful affection and mutual help which brightened their lonely life.

She heard nothing from Gavin. After some painful correspondence, in which neither would retract a step from the stand they had taken, Gavin ceased writing, and Jean ceased expecting, though before this calm was reached she had many a bitter hour the mother never suspected. But such hours were to Jean's soul what the farmer's call "growing weather;" in them much rich thought and feeling sprang up insensibly; her nature ripened and mellowed and she became a far lovelier woman than her twentieth year had promised.

One gray February afternoon, when the rain was falling steadily, Jean felt unusually depressed and weary. An apprehension of some unhappiness made her sad, and she could not sew for the tears that would dim her eyes. Suddenly the door opened and Gavin's sister Mary entered. Jean did not know her very well, and she did not like her at all, and she wondered what she had come to tell her.

"I am going to New York on Saturday, Jean," she said, "and I thought Gavin would like to know how you looked and felt these days."

Jean flushed indignantly. "You can see how I look easy enough, Mary Burns," she answered; "but as to how I feel, that is a thing I keep to myself these days."

"Gavin has furnished a pretty house at the long last, and I am to be the mistress of it. You will have heard, doubtless, that the school where I taught so long has been broken up, and so I was on the world, as one may say, and Gavin could not bear that. He is a good man, is Gavin, and I'm thinking I shall have a happy time with him in America."

"I hope you will, Mary. Give him a kind wish from me; and I will bid you 'good bye' now, if you please, seeing that I have more sewing to do to-night than I can well manage."

This event wounded Jean sorely. She felt sure Mary had only called for an unkind purpose, and that she would cruelly misrepresent her appearance and condition to Gavin. And no woman likes even a lost lover to think scornfully of her. But she brought her sewing beside her mother and talked the affair over with her, and so, at the end of the evening, went to bed resigned, and even cheerful. Never had they spent a more confidential, loving night together, and this fact was destined to be a comfort to Jean during all the rest of her life. For in the morning she noticed a singular look on her mother's face and at noon she found her in her chair fast in that sleep which knows no wakening in this world.

It was a blow which put all other considerations far out of Jean's mind. She mourned with a passionate sorrow her loss, and though Uncle David came at once to assist her in the necessary arrangements, she suffered no hand but her own to do the last kind offices for her dear dead. And oh! how empty and lonely was now the little cottage, while the swift return to all the ordinary duties of life seemed such a cruel effacement. Uncle David watched her silently, but on the evening of the third day after the funeral he said, kindly:

"Dry your eyes, Jean. There is naething to weep for. Your mother is far beyond tears."

"I cannot bear to forget her a minute, uncle, yet folks go and come and never name her; and it is not a week since she had a word and a smile for everybody."

"Death is forgetfulness, Jean; ... 'one lonely way We go: and is she gone? Is all our best friends say.'

"You must come home with me now, Jean. I canna be what your mother has been to you, but I'll do the best I can for you, lassie. Sell these bit sticks o' furniture and shut the door on the empty house and begin a new life. You've had sorrow about a lad; let him go. All o' the past worth your keeping you can save in your memory."

"I will be glad to go with you, uncle. I shall be no charge on you. I can find my own bread if you will just love me a little."

"I'm no that poor, Jean. You are welcome to share my loaf. Put that weary; thimble and needle awa'; I'll no see you take another stitch."

So Jean followed her uncle's advice and went back with him to Glasgow. He had never said a word about his home, and Jean knew not what she expected—certainly nothing more than a small floor in some of the least expensive streets of the great city. It was dark when they reached Glasgow, but Jean was sensible of a great change in her uncle's manner as soon as they left the railway. He made an imperative motion and a carriage instantly answered it; and they were swiftly driven to a large dwelling in one of the finest crescents of the West end. He led her into a handsome parlor and called a servant, and bid her "show Miss Anderson her rooms;" and thus, without a word of preparation, Jean found herself surrounded by undreamed of luxury.

Nothing was ever definitely explained to her, but she gradually learned to understand the strange old man who assumed the guardianship of her life. His great wealth was evident, and it was not long ere she discovered that it was largely spent in two directions—scientific discovery and the Temperance Crusade. Men whose lives were devoted to chemistry or to electrical investigations, or passionate apostles of total abstinence from intoxicants were daily at his table; and Jean could not help becoming an enthusiastic partisan on such matters. One of the savants, a certain Professor Sharp, fell deeply in love with her; and she felt it difficult to escape the influence of his wooing, which had all the persistent patience of a man accustomed "to seek till he found, and so not lose his labor."

Her life was now very happy. Cautious in giving his love, David Nicoll gave it freely as soon as he had resolved to adopt his niece. Nor did he ever regret the gift. "Jean entered my house and she made it a home," he said to his friends. No words could have better explained the position. In the winter they entertained with a noble hospitality; in the summer they sailed far north to the mystical isles of the Western seas; to Orkney and Zetland and once even as far as the North Cape by the light of the midnight sun. So the time passed wonderfully away, until Jean was thirty-two years old. The simple, unlettered girl had then become a woman of great culture and of perfect physical charm. Wise in many ways, she yet kept her loving heart, and her uncle delighted in her. "You have made my auld age parfectly happy, Jean," he said to her on the last solemn night of his life; "and I thank God for the gift o' your honest love! Now that I am going the way of all flesh, I have gi'en you every bawbee I have. I have put no restrictions on you, and I have left nae dead wishes behind me. You will do as you like wi' the land and the siller, and you will do right in a' things, I ken that, Jean. If it should come into your heart to tak' the love Professor Sharp offers you, I'll be pleased, for he'll never spend a shilling that willna be weel spent; and he is a clever man, and a good man and he loves you. But it is a' in your ain will; do as you like, anent either this or that."

This was the fourth great change in Jean's life. Gavin's going away had opened the doors of her destiny; her father's death had sent her to the school of self-reliant poverty; her mother's death given her a home of love and luxury, and now her uncle put her in a position of vast, untrammeled responsibility. But if love is the joy of life, this was not the end; the crowning change was yet to come; and now, with both her hands full, her heart involuntarily turned to her first lover.

About this time, also, Gavin was led to remember Jean. His sister Mary was going to marry, and the circumstance annoyed him. "I'll have to store my furniture and pay for the care of it; or I'll have to sell it at a loss; or I'll have to hire a servant lass, and be robbed on the right hand and the left," he said fretfully. "It was not in the bargain that you should marry, and it is very bad behavior in you, Mary."

"Well, Gavin, get married yourself, and the furnishing will not be wasted," answered Mary. "There is Annie Riley, just dying for the love of you, and no brighter, smarter girl in New York city."

"She isn't in love with me; she is tired of the Remington all day; and if I wanted a wife, there is some one better than Annie Riley."

"Jean Anderson?"

"Ay."

"Send for her picture, and you will see what a plain, dowdy old maid she is. She is not for the like of you, Gavin—a bit country dressmaker, poor, and past liking."

Gavin said no more, but that night he wrote Jean Anderson the following letter: "Dear Jean. I wish you would send me a picture of yourself. If you will not write me a word, you might let me have your face to look at. Mary is getting herself married, and I will be alone in a few days." That is enough, he thought; "she will understand that there is a chance for her yet, if she is as bonnie as in the old days. Mary is not to be trusted. She never liked Jean. I'll see for myself."

Jean got this letter one warm day in spring, and she "understood" it as clearly as Gavin intended her to. For a long time she sat thinking it over, then she went to a drawer for a photo, taken just before her mother's death. It showed her face without any favor, without even justice, and the plain merino gown, which was then her best. And with this picture she wrote—"Dear Gavin. The enclosed was taken five years since, and there has been changes since."

She did not say what the changes were, but Gavin was sure they were unfavorable. He gazed at the sad, thoughtful face, the poor plain dress, and he was disappointed. A girl like that would do his house no honor; he would not care to introduce her to his fellow clerks; they would not envy him a bit. Annie Riley was far better looking, and far more stylish. He decided in favor of Annie Riley.

Jean was not astonished when no answer came. She had anticipated her failure to please her old lover; but she smiled a little sadly at his failure. Then there came into her mind a suspicion of Mary, an uncertainty, a lingering hope that some circumstance, not to be guessed at from a distance, was to blame for Gavin's silence and utter want of response. It was midsummer, she wanted a breath of the ocean; why should she not go to New York and quietly see how things were for herself? The idea took possession of her, and she carried it out.

She knew the name of the large dry goods firm that Gavin served, and the morning after her arrival in New York she strolled into it for a pair of gloves. As they were being fitted on she heard Gavin speak, and moving her position slightly, she saw him leaning against a pile of summer blankets. He was talking to one of his fellows, and evidently telling a funny story, at which both giggled and snickered, ere they walked their separate ways. Being midsummer the store was nearly empty, and Jean, by varying her purchases, easily kept Gavin in sight. She never for one moment found the sight a pleasant one. Gavin had deteriorated in every way. He was no longer handsome; the veil of youth had fallen from him, and his face, his hands, his figure, his slouching walk, his querulous authoritative voice, all revealed a man whom Jean repelled at every point. Years had not refined, they had vulgarized him. His clothing careless and not quite fresh, offended her taste; in fact, his whole appearance was of that shabby genteel character, which is far more mean and plebeian than can be given by undisguised working apparel. As Jean was taking note of these things a girl, with a flushed, angry face, spoke to him. She was evidently making a complaint, and Gavin answered her in a manner which made Jean burn from head to feet. The disillusion was complete; she never looked at him again, and he never knew she had looked at him at all.

But after Mary's marriage he heard news which startled him. Mary, under her new name, wrote to an acquaintance in Lambrig, and this acquaintance in reply said, "You will have heard that Jean Anderson was left a great fortune by her uncle, David Nicoll. She is building a home near Lambrig that is finer than Maxwell Castle; and Lord Maxwell has rented the castle to her until her new home is finished. You wouldn't ken the looks of her now, she is that handsome, but weel-a-way, fine feathers aye make fine birds!"

Gavin fairly trembled when he heard this news, and as he had been with the firm eleven years and never asked a favor, he resolved to tell them he had important business in Scotland, and ask for a month's holiday to attend to it. If he was on the ground he never doubted his personal influence. "Jean was aye wax in my fingers," he said to Mary.

"There is Annie Riley," answered Mary.

"She will have to give me up. I'll not marry her. I am going to marry Jean, and settle myself in Scotland."

"Annie is not the girl to be thrown off that kind of way, Gavin. You have promised to marry her."

"I shall marry Jean Anderson, and then what will Annie do about it, I would like to know?"

"I think you will find out."

In the fall he obtained permission to go to Scotland for a month, and he hastened to Lambrig as fast as steam could carry him. He intended no secret visit; he had made every preparation to fill his old townsmen with admiration and envy. But things had changed, even in Lambrig. There was a new innkeeper, who could answer none of his questions, and who did not remember Minister Anderson and his daughter, Jean. He began to fear he had come on a fool's errand, and after a leisurely, late breakfast, he strolled out to make his own investigations.

There was certainly a building on a magnificent scale going up on a neighboring hill, and he walked toward it. When half way there a finely-appointed carriage passed him swiftly, but not too swiftly for him to see that Jean and a very handsome man were its occupants. "It will be her lawyer or architect," he thought; and he walked rapidly onward, pleased with himself for having put on his very best walking suit. There were many workmen on the building, and he fell into conversation with a man who was mixing mortar; but all the time he was watching Jean and her escort stepping about the great uncovered spaces of the new dwelling-house with such an air of mutual trust and happiness that it angered him.

"Who is the lady?" he asked at length; "she seems to have business here."

"What for no? The house is her ain. She is Mistress Sharp, and that is the professor with her. He is a great gun in the Glasgow University."

"They are married, then?"

"Ay, they are married. What are you saying at all? They were married a month syne, and they are as happy as robins in spring, I'm thinking. I'll drink their health, sir, if you'll gie me the bit o' siller."

Gavin gave the silver and turned away dazed and sick at heart. His business in Scotland was over. The quiet Lothian country sickened him; he turned his face to London, and very soon went back to New York. He had lost Jean, and he had lost Jean's fortune; and there were no words to express his chagrin and disappointment. His sister felt the first weight of it. He blamed her entirely. She had lied to him about Jean's beauty. He believed he would have liked the photo but for Mary. And all for Annie Riley! He hated Annie Riley! He was resolved never to marry her, and he let the girl feel his dislike in no equivocal manner.

For a time Annie was tearful and conciliating. Then she wrote him a touching letter, and asked him to tell her frankly if he had ceased to love her, and was resolved to break their marriage off. And Gavin did tell her, with almost brutal frankness, that he no longer loved her, and that he had firmly made up his mind not to marry her. He said something about his heart being in Scotland, but that was only a bit of sentiment that he thought gave a better air to his unfaithfulness.

Annie did not answer his letter, but Messrs. Howe & Hummel did, and Gavin soon found himself the centre of a breach of promise trial, with damages laid at fifty thousand dollars. All his fine poetical love letters were in the newspapers; he was ashamed to look men and women in the face; he suffered a constant pillory for weeks; through his vanity, his self-consciousness, his egotism he was perpetually wounded. But pretty Annie Riley was the object of public pity and interest, and she really seemed to enjoy her notoriety. The verdict was righteously enough in her favor. The jury gave her ten thousand dollars, and all expenses, and Gavin Burns was a ruined man. His eleven years savings only amounted to nine thousand dollars, and for the balance he was compelled to sell his furniture and give notes payable out of his next year's salary. He wept like a child as he signed these miserable vouchers for his folly, and for some days was completely prostrated by the evil he had called unto himself. Then the necessities of his position compelled him to go to work again, though it was with a completely broken spirit.

"I'm getting on to forty," he said to his sister, "and I am beginning the world over again! One woman has given me a disappointment that I will carry to the grave; and another woman is laughing at me, for she has got all my saved siller, and more too; forbye, she is like to marry Bob Severs and share it with him. Then I have them weary notes to meet beyond all. There never was a man so badly used as I have been!"

No one pitied him much. Whatever his acquaintances said to his face he knew right well their private opinion was that he had received just what he deserved.



AN ONLY OFFER.

"Aunt Phoebe, were you ever pretty?"

"When I was sixteen I was considered so. I was very like you then, Julia. I am forty-three now, remember."

"Did you ever have an offer—an offer of marriage, I mean, aunt?"

"No. Well, that is not true; I did have one offer."

"And you refused it?"

"No."

"Then he died, or went away?"

"No."

"Or deserted you?"

"No."

"Then you deceived him, I suppose?"

"I did not."

"What ever happened, then? Was he poor, or crippled or something dreadful"

"He was rich and handsome."

"Suppose you tell me about him."

"I never talk about him to any one."

"Did it happen at the old place?"

"Yes, Julia. I never left Ryelands until I was thirty. This happened when I was sixteen."

"Was he a farmer's son in the neighborhood?"

"He was a fine city gentleman."

"Oh, aunt, how interesting! Put down your embroidery and tell me about it; you cannot see to work longer."

Perhaps after so many years of silence a sudden longing for sympathy and confidence seized the elder lady, for she let her work fall from her hands, and smiling sadly, said:

"Twenty-seven years ago I was standing one afternoon by the gate at Ryelands. All the work had been finished early, and my mother and two elder sisters had gone to the village to see a friend. I had watched them a little way down the hillside, and was turning to go into the house, when I saw a stranger on horseback coming up the road. He stopped and spoke to mother, and this aroused my curiosity; so I lingered at the gate. He stopped when he reached it, fastened his horse, and asked, 'Is Mr. Wakefield in?'

"I said, 'father was in the barn, and I could fetch him,' which I immediately did.

"He was a dark, unpleasant-looking man, and had a masterful way with him, even to father, that I disliked; but after a short, business-like talk, apparently satisfactory to both, he went away without entering the house. Father put his hands in his pockets and watched him out of sight; then, looking at me, he said, 'Put the spare rooms in order, Phoebe.'

"'They are in order, father; but is that man to occupy them?'

"'Yes, he and his patient, a young gentleman of fine family, who is in bad health.'

"'Do you know the young gentleman, father?'

"'I know it is young Alfred Compton—that is enough for me.'

"'And the dark man who has just left? I don't like his looks, father.'

"'Nobody wants thee to like his looks. He is Mr. Alfred's physician—a Dr. Orman, of Boston. Neither of them are any of thy business, so ask no more questions;' and with that he went back to the barn.

"Mother was not at all astonished. She said there had been letters on the subject already, and that she had been rather expecting the company. 'But,' she added, 'they will pay well, and as Melissa is to be married at Christmas, ready money will be very needful.'

"About dark a carriage arrived. It contained two gentlemen and several large trunks. I had been watching for it behind the lilac trees and I saw that our afternoon visitor was now accompanied by a slight, very fair-man, dressed with extreme care in the very highest fashion. I saw also that he was handsome, and I was quite sure he must be rich, or no doctor would wait upon him so subserviently.

"This doctor I had disliked at first sight, and I soon began to imagine that I had good cause to hate him. His conduct to his patient I believed to be tyrannical and unkind. Some days he insisted that Mr. Compton was too ill to go out, though the poor gentleman begged for a walk; and again, mother said, he would take from him all his books, though he pleaded urgently for them.

"One afternoon the postman brought Dr. Orman a letter, which seemed to be important, for he asked father to drive him to the next town, and requested mother to see that Mr. Compton did not leave the house. I suppose it was not a right thing to do, but this handsome sick stranger, so hardly used, and so surrounded with mystery, had roused in me a sincere sympathy for his loneliness and suffering, and I walked through that part of the garden into which his windows looked. We had been politely requested to avoid it, 'because the sight of strangers increased Mr. Compton's nervous condition.' I did not believe this, and I determined to try the experiment.