“I don’t remember thinking of that but I could hear my friend Willie telling me, ‘See her safe on board, Ian. Don’t leave her till she is in the captain’s care. Do this for me, Ian!’ And I did it for both Agnes’ and Willie’s sake but mainly for 228 Willie’s, for I love him. He is my right-hand friend, always. Perhaps I did wrong.”
“It is a pity there was any mystification about it. Was it necessary for Agnes Henderson to disguise herself?”
“Perhaps not, but it prevented trouble and disappointment. Her father supposed her to be at her uncle’s home. On Saturday afternoon he went to see her and found she had not been there at all. He returned to Edinburgh and could get no trace of her, nor was she located until I returned and informed him that she was on the Atlantic.”
There was a few moments of silence and then Ian said, “Have I done anything unpardonable? Surely you will not let that jealous, envious letter stand between Thora and myself?”
Then Ragnor answered, “Tonight I will say neither this nor that on the matter. I will sleep over the subject and take counsel of One wiser than myself. Thou had better do likewise. Many things are to consider.”
And Ian went away without a word. There was anger in his heart, and as he sat gloomily in his dimly lit room and felt the damp chill of the midnight, he told himself that he had been hardly judged. “I have done nothing wrong,” he whispered 229 passionately. “Old McLeod collected his own rents and looked after his own property and no one thought he did wrong. He was an elder in one of the largest Edinburgh kirks and the favourite chairman in missionary meetings, but because I did not go to kirk, what was business in him was sin in me.
“As to the gambling houses, I had nothing to do with them but to collect lawful money, due the McLeod estate; and as far as I can see, men who gamble for money are quite respectable if they get what they gamble for. There was that old reprobate Lord Sinclair. He redeemed the Sinclair estates by gambling and he married the beautiful daughter of the noble Seaforths. Nobody blamed him. Pshaw! It is all a matter of money––or it is my ill luck.” And to such irritating reflections he finally fell asleep.