“I’ve come to make it up to you, miss,” he said with trembling lips. “I’ve come to give back what I took from you.”
Above the crackling of the fire and the beating of the rain on the windows they heard her say:
The man tore off his dripping coat, and taking a knife from his pocket, began cutting at the lining. He took out package after package of bills and laid them on the table. And still he clipped, and still the money appeared from the wadded lining of the coat. Then he flung the coat on a chair.
“I’ll leave it there,” he said. “If there is more you can find it.” He folded his arms and looked at the girl.
“Well, that’s over,” he said. “I tried to go on with the plan I’d laid out for myself, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking I was a thief. And then a voice came from Heaven and told me so. Don’t smile at that, miss—my poor wife heard the voice, and Hannah heard it. I’ve left them out in the mountains and God only knows what will come to them, for I reckon you’ll be wanting to hand me over to the sheriff.”
“Oh, Mr. Disbrow,” cried Annie Laurie, “you know I’ll not do anything of the kind. I couldn’t do such a thing to an old neighbor, and to Sam’s father at that!”
Disbrow raised one arm in the air.
“I’ll make a clean breast of everything now,” he said in his deep quavering voice. “Sam ain’t my boy; nor he ain’t my wife’s boy. He’s taken from the asylum, Sam is. We thought we wasn’t going to have a child, and we took him and never told him. Anybody could see he wa’n’t our boy, if they’d had sense.”