It was not long before Andrew joined his mother and sister, and the man was a changed man. There was grave purpose in his calm face, and a joy, too deep for words, in the glint of his eyes and in the graciousness of his manner.
"Come, Christina!" he said. "I want you you to go with me; we will bring the siller home together. But I forget--it is maybe too far for you to walk again to-day?"
"I would walk ten times as far to pleasure you, Andrew. Do you know the place I told you of?"
"Aye, I know it well. I hid the first few shillings there that I ever saved."
As they walked together over the sands Christina said: "I wonder, Andrew, when and how you carried the box there? Can you guess at all the way this trouble came about?"
"I can, but I'm ashamed to tell you, Christina. You see, after I had shown you the money, I took a fear anent it. I thought maybe you might tell Jamie Logan, and the possibility of this fretted on my mind until it became a sure thing with me. So, being troubled in my heart, I doubtless got up in my sleep and put the box in my oldest and safest hiding-place."
"But why then did you not remember that you had done so?"
"You see, dearie, I hid it in my sleep, so then it was only in my sleep I knew where I had put it. There is two of us, I am thinking, lassie, and the one man does not always tell the other man all he knows. I ought to have trusted you, Christina; but I doubted you, and, as mother says, doubt aye fathers sin or sorrow of some kind or other."
"You might have safely trusted me, Andrew."
"I know now I might. But he is lifeless that is faultless; and the wrong I have done I must put right. I am thinking of Jamie Logan?"
"Poor Jamie! You know now that he never wronged you?"
"I know, and I will let him know as soon as possible. When did you hear from him? And where is he at all?"
"I don't know just where he is. He sailed away yon time; and when he got to New York, he left the ship."
"What for did he do that?"
"O Andrew, I cannot tell. He was angry with me for not coming to Glasgow as I promised him I would."