“I think that too.”
“Well, then, we are of one mind so far. Now my wish is to be bread-giver even when I am dead, to be bread-giver to the children whose fathers God has taken. Here are Magnus Tulloch’s four, and Hugh Petrie’s little lad, and 301 James Traill’s five children, and many more of whom I know not. My houses, big and little, shall be homes for them. My money shall buy them meal and meat and wadmall to clothe them. There are poor lonely women who will be glad to care for them, eight or ten to each, and Suneva Fae and Margaret Vedder will see that the women do their duty. What thinkest thou?”
“Now, then, I think this, that God has made thy will for thee. Moreover, thou hast put a good thought into my heart also. Thou knows I brought in my hand a little money when I came to Shetland, and it has grown, I know not how. I will put mine with thine, and though we are two childless old men, many children shall grow up and bless us.”
Into this scheme Tulloch threw all his strength and foresight and prudence. The matter was urgent, and there were no delays, and no waste of money. Three comfortable fishermen’s cottages that happened to be vacant, were fitted with little bunks, and plenty of fleeces for bedding. Peat was stacked for firing, and meal and salted fish sent in; so that in three days twenty-three fatherless, motherless 302 children were in warm, comfortable homes.
Suneva entered into the work with perfect delight. She selected the mothers for each cottage, and she took good care that they kept them clean and warm, that the little ones’ food was properly cooked, and their clothes washed and mended. If there were a sorrow or a complaint it was brought to her, and Suneva was not one to blame readily a child.
Never man went down to the grave with his hands so full of beneficent work as Tulloch. Through it he took the sacrament of pain almost joyfully, and often in the long, lonely hours of nightly suffering, he remembered with a smile of pleasure, the little children sweetly sleeping in the homes he had provided for them. The work grew and prospered wonderfully; never had there been a busier, happier winter in Lerwick. As was customary, there were tea-parties at Suneva’s and elsewhere nearly every night, and at them the women sewed for the children, while the men played the violin, or recited from the Sagas, or sung the plaintive songs of the Islands.
Margaret brought the dying man constant intelligence of his bounty: the children, one 303 or two at a time, were allowed to come and see him; twice, leaning on Dr. Balloch, and his servant Bele, he visited the homes, and saw the orphans at their noonday meals. He felt the clasp of grateful hands, and the kiss of baby lips that could not speak their thanks. His last was the flower of his life-work and he saw the budding of it, and was satisfied with its beauty.
One morning in the following April, Margaret received the letter which Suneva had prophesied would arrive by the twentieth, if the weather were favorable. Nowhere in the world has the term, “weather permitting,” such significance as in these stormy seas. It is only necessary to look at the mail steamers, so strongly built, so bluff at the bows, and nearly as broad as they are long, to understand that they expect to have to take plenty of hard blows and buffetings. It was the first steamer that had arrived for months, and though it made the harbor in a blinding snow-storm, little Jan would not be prevented from going into the town to see if it brought a letter. For the boy’s dream of every thing grand and noble centered in his father. He talked of him incessantly; he longed to see him with all his heart.
Margaret also was restless and faint with anxiety; she could not even knit. Never were two hours of such interminable length. At last she saw him coming, his head bent to the storm, his fleet feet skimming the white ground, his hands deep in his pockets. Far off, he discovered his mother watching for him; then he stopped a moment, waved the letter above his head, and hurried onward. It was a good letter, a tender, generous, noble letter, full of love and longing, and yet alive with the stirring story of right trampling wrong under foot. The child listened to it with a glowing face: