“What is it, Mother?” he asked. “I can see you have something to tell me.”
“I have that, Andrew! O my dear lad, your money is found! I do not think a penny-bit of it is missing. Don’t mind me! I am greeting for the very joy of it—but O Andrew, you be to praise God! It is his doing, and marvellous in our eyes. Ask Christina. She can tell you better than I can.”
But Andrew could not speak. He touched his sister’s hand, and dumbly looked into her happy face. He was white as death, but he sat bending forward to her, with one hand outstretched, as if to clasp and grasp the thing she had to tell him. So Christina told him the whole story, and after he had heard it, he pushed his plate and cup away, and rose up, and went into his room and shut the door. And Janet said gratefully:—
“It is all right, Christina. He’ll get nothing but good advice in God’s council chamber. We’ll not need to worry ourselves again anent either the lad or the money. The one has come to his senses, and the other will come to its use. And we will cast nothing up to him; the best boat loses her rudder once in a while.”
It was not long before Andrew joined his mother and sister, and the man was a changed man. There was grave purpose in his calm face, and a joy, too deep for words, in the glint of his eyes and in the graciousness of his manner.
“Come, Christina!” he said. “I want you you to go with me; we will bring the siller home together. But I forget—it is maybe too far for you to walk again to-day?”
“I would walk ten times as far to pleasure you, Andrew. Do you know the place I told you of?”
“Aye, I know it well. I hid the first few shillings there that I ever saved.”
As they walked together over the sands Christina said: “I wonder, Andrew, when and how you carried the box there? Can you guess at all the way this trouble came about?”
“I can, but I’m ashamed to tell you, Christina. You see, after I had shown you the money, I took a fear anent it. I thought maybe you might tell Jamie Logan, and the possibility of this fretted on my mind until it became a sure thing with me. So, being troubled in my heart, I doubtless got up in my sleep and put the box in my oldest and safest hiding-place.”