Bright and early the next morning at Castle Garden the women were roused from their sleep, for the beds must be rolled up, and the place cleared for the business of the day, and all must be ready for the early train.

In the confusion of preparing the children for breakfast and the journey, the women had forgotten Jeanie for the time, till suddenly Janet, spying her, with her bundle and her umbrella, standing and casting troubled, wistful glances at the door, ran over and brought her to where the women and children were drinking coffee from great cups, and eating rolls of brown-bread and butter. Seating her in the midst of them, she said, "Eat a bit o' the bannock, dearie. Gran'daddie will cam back wi' a braw new bonnet for Jeanie, and then we'll a' gang awa' i' the train togither."

"I dinna want a bonnet," cried Jeanie; "I on'y want gran'daddie."

"Dinna greet, bairnie; he'll no leave ye lang noo."

But the old man, contrary to their hopes, failed to appear, so there rose a troubled consultation among the women regarding Jeanie. They had all lived neighbors to the Lowries, a mile or so beyond the dike which is a stone's-throw from the duke's palace, near Hamilton; the "gudemen" of their families, hearing great reports of the mines in America, and the times being hard for miners at home, had gone out to verify them, Angus Lowrie among the rest. All four had prospered, and now sent for their wives and bairnies. Young Lowrie, however, was doomed to the bitter sorrow of never more seeing the bonny wife he had left behind him, for a fever had carried her off in her prime; so that Jeanie, her bairn, was left to the sole care of her grandfather, who loved her tenderly, as the old are wont to love the young.

While the women were in the midst of their dilemma, half resolved to carry off the "lane bairnie" privately, lest the officers should interfere, the superintendent, seeing some trouble was afoot, came over and soon settled the matter, for there was a law on the subject that he was bound to obey.

But we are quite forgetting old Sandy all this time. Seeing that he was lost, and there was no help for it, that he should sit down in the particular spot he did was a peculiar stroke of good fortune, for it was the very house he had been seeking, and what was most wonderful, just at that moment the door above opened, and down came Alec Deans in time to hear Sandy's faint cry, "God help my puir Jeanie!"

Alec Deans had not heard the dear Scottish accent in many a year, so straightway that sound went to his very heart-strings, making them thrill and tingle with a joy that was as suddenly turned to pain, when, stooping down, he found the old man fallen back as one dead.

With little ado—for Sandy was small and thin—he lifted him bodily, carried him up the steps, and rang a peal which soon brought his wife to the door. Placing the old man on a sofa in the warm sitting-room where the light fell on his poor, pale face, Alec Deans in a moment recognized his foster-father, and set to work to restore him. The long stormy passage, and the trials incident to emigrant life on shipboard, added to the fatigue and fright of his night's wanderings, had so told on the old man's feeble frame, that after much effort on the part of Alec Deans to revive him, he could do no more than move restlessly, murmuring, "Puir Jeanie! Puir wee bairnie Jeanie!"

Before he could well tell his story, the most of it became known to his foster-son, for the Commissioners, finding he did not return to Castle Garden, sending Jeanie weeping away to the Refuge on Ward's Island, and notifying the police, advertised the missing man in the papers.