“Grannie bade me, grandfather, and you must take it you ken.”
She knelt beside him, holding the cup for him, and by coaxing and entreating made him take a little food.
“And now you must just rest a while.”
They had brought him into the front room “for quiet,” Katie said, as he looked round in surprise; “rest and think about it,” she whispered, hardly venturing to say more. Gradually it came back to him that something had happened. By this time breakfast was over, and worship, and Katie brought Mr Maxwell in and left him there.
Jacob Holt would not stay to breakfast, though Davie and his mother had asked him to stay. Before he went he gave the squire’s letter to Davie.
“Give it to your grandfather, but do not read it,” said he.
He had something to say to Mr Maxwell also.
“I don’t know just how much Mr Fleming knows of what happened long ago. Hugh Fleming, after much entreaty from several of us, signed my father’s name where he ought not. He alone had the skill to do it. It was to save—some of us from much trouble. He was not in the scrape. He was not to be benefited personally by it, except that he was persuaded that some foolish deed of his could be more easily kept from his father’s knowledge if he helped to screen the rest by yielding. If he had stayed at home and met it, it would have been well; my father made no trouble about it. But he went away—and died. And you must tell his father—”
Jacob turned his back upon the minister for a full minute, and then without another word went away.
It was Mr Maxwell who read the letter to Mr Fleming after all. There were only a few lines more than Katie read: “I trust God has forgiven me, and that He will keep me safe from sin. Forgive me, dear father and mother and James.”