The love of strong drink had brought misery to her home, since ever she could remember. It had driven her brothers away from it and had caused her father’s death and her mother’s widowhood, and she shrank with terror from the thought of living such a life as her mother had lived. When her lover entreated her, saying, that being his wife she might save him from his sin, she did not believe it; but she knew that in her love and her weakness she might yield her will to his, and lose herself without saving him. So she went away with a sore heart, and when her mother’s accident had made it necessary for her to come home again, she hardly could tell whether she was glad or sorry to come.
And the first “kenned face” she saw as she drew near home was the face of her lover. He did not see her. He had stepped from another carriage of the train, into the little station a few miles from Portie. Young George Dawson’s hand rested on his shoulder, for the single minute that he stood there, a very different looking person from the wild lad she had left years ago.
“Yon’s young Saughleas,” she heard one fellow-traveller say to another. “And yon’s Tam Saugster. He’s hame again, it seems.”
“I ha’e heard that he has gathered himsel’ up wonderfu’ this while back. He is a fine sailor-like lad.”
“Ay. He’s his ain man now. And he’ll be skipper o’ the ‘John Seaton’ before she sails again if young George Dawson gets his way, and they say he gets it in most things with his father.”
Then Annie saw the sailor spring back into the carriage again as the signal was given, and she got a glimpse of George Dawson’s kindly face as they passed, and then she saw nothing for a while for the rush of tears which she had much ado to hide.
“The skipper o’ the ‘John Seaton’! Ah! weel, he has forgotten me lang syne, but that is little matter since he has found himsel’.”
But Tam had not forgotten her, and whatever he might have done at the time, he did not now resent her refusal to take as her master one who could not master himself. That very night as she sat in the gloaming listening to her mother’s fretful complaints, and taking counsel with herself as to how they were to live in the coming days, a familiar step came to the door, and Tam lifted the latch and came in without waiting to be bidden.
All the rest was natural enough and easy. The next time Tam sailed he was to sail as master of the “John Seaton,” and he was to sail a married man, he said firmly, and what could Annie do but yield and begin her preparations forthwith. The cottage in which Mrs Cairnie had hitherto had but a room, was taken, and Tam set himself to making it worthy to be the home of the woman he loved.
And a neat and pleasant place it looked when Jean and Marion went in that day. Into the pretty parlour the bride that was to be looked shyly, scarcely venturing to follow them.