Thus, when he sat down of an evening and surveyed a packing-box filled with several sacks of coal, all paid for; when he viewed the collection of glassware, the "family plate," and the very desirable cutlery; when he gazed with pride upon his seven-cent treasures and his curtains of chintz at ten cents a mile; when he considered that all these were his very own, his sense of having possessions made him less communistic and more conservative. Primitively, a Conservative was a being who owned something, just as Darwin's chimpanzee in the "Zoo," who discovered how to break nuts with a stone and hid the stone, was a Tory; the other monkeys who stole it were necessarily Reformers.
About ten o'clock on the evening of the trial Rankin was sitting among his possessions sipping some "gift-spoon" tea. Around him were three evening papers and two special editions. The "startling developments" and "unexpected changes" which had "transpired" at the Victoria Bank had made the special editions sell off like cheap peaches, and Rankin was enjoying the weakness—pardonable in youth and not unknown to maturity—of reading each paper's account of himself and the trial. They spoke of his "acuteness" and "foresight," and commented on his being the sole means of recovering the forty-eight thousand dollars. One paper must have jumped at a conclusion when it called him "a well-known and promising young lawyer—one of the rising men at the bar."
"The tide has turned," he said. "Twenty cents a day is not going to cover my total expenses after this. I feel it in my bones that the money will come pouring in now." He was mechanically filling a pipe when a rap at the door recalled him from his dream. A tall Scotchman, whom Rankin recognized as the messenger of the Victoria Bank, handed him a letter and then felt around for the stairs in the darkness, and descended backward, on his hands and knees, for fear of accidents.
A pleasing letter from the manager of the Victoria Bank inclosed one of the recovered thousand-dollar bills.
Rankin sat down. "I shall never," he said, with an air of resolve, "steal any more coal! And now I'll have a cigar, three for a quarter, and blow the expense!"
Two weeks afterward there came to him a copy of a resolution passed by the bank directors, together with a notification that they had arranged with the bank solicitors, Messrs. Godlie, Lobbyer, Dertewercke, and Toylor, to have him taken in as a junior partner.
Immediately after Geoffrey was sentenced, Jack Cresswell was, of course, discharged. A dozen hands were being held out to congratulate him, when Detective Dearborn drew him through a side door into an empty room, where they had a short talk about keeping the name of Nina Lindon from the public, and then they departed together for Tremaine Buildings in a cab, while the two valises in front looked, like their owner, none the better for their vicissitudes. Dearborn felt that little could be said to mend the trouble he had caused Jack, but he did all he could, and there was certainly nothing hard-hearted in the care with which the redoubtable detective assisted his former victim to bed. Mrs. Priest was summoned, also a doctor. Jack was found to be worse than he thought, and Patsey was ordered to remain within call in the next room, where he consumed cigars at twelve dollars the hundred throughout the night.
The next day Mrs. Mackintosh and Margaret came down in a cab to Jack's lonely quarters, and insisted upon his being moved to their house during his illness. While unable to go home to his parents at Halifax he was loath to give trouble to his friends, and made excuses, until he saw that Margaret really wished him to come, and divined that his coming might be a relief to her.
It was so. In the weeks that followed, whatever these two suffered in the darkness and solitude of the nights, during the day-time they were brave. The heart of each knew its own bitterness. In a short time Jack found the comfort of speech in telling Margaret many things. Unavoidably Geoffrey's name came up, for he was entangled in both their lives. Little by little Jack's story came out, as he lay back weakly on his couch, until, warmed by Margaret's sympathy, he told her all about Nina and himself—so far as he knew the story—and in the presence of his manifold troubles, and at the thought of his suffering when he witnessed, as a captive, Nina's death, Margaret felt that she was in the presence of one who had known even greater grief than her own. This was good for her. After a while she was able to speak to Jack about Geoffrey, and this brought them more and more together.