The schoolmaster left me to continue my work, and three days afterwards I heard that he had started for Edinburgh in a trading sloop that plied between Kirkwall and Leith.

He was absent in Scotland for nearly two months, and when he returned I received a message from him asking me to bring Willie Hercus and Robbie Rosson down to the schoolhouse on a particular evening.  He welcomed us with much affection, and during tea he related to us many of his experiences in Edinburgh.

But his chief reason for having us with him on that evening was, as he said, to give us an account of his stewardship in regard to the viking’s treasure.  He had had several interviews with the authorities of the Antiquarian Museum, with whom he had finally left the curiosities, receiving in return a due share of money to be delivered in equal portions to the three of us.

I believe that the Jarl Haffling’s treasures may be seen to this day in the Antiquarian Museum of Edinburgh; but I have seen only the catalogue, in which the curiosities are enumerated and described as having been found by some boys playing on the shore of Skaill Bay, Orkney.  Be that as it may, the money brought back by Mr. Drever—­which was greatly in excess of our expectations, and allowed to each of us a share much larger than Tom Kinlay had received from old Isaac—­came as a great help not only to my mother, but also to the widow of Tom Hercus, to say nothing of Mrs. Rosson, whose rent had fallen so far in arrear that she had been threatened with an eviction from her cottage, and was only saved by this timely assistance.

Chapter XXVI.  A Subterranean Adventure.

It was little that I saw of my old school companions now that I had become a farm worker and spent my days in the fields.  Sometimes, indeed, when I was tending my nibbling flock on the hillside, or driving them over to the distant pasture land by the margin of the loch of Harray, where the grass grew sweetest, I would chance to see Thora Kinlay on her way from Crua Breck to Stromness, and occasionally she would come to Lyndardy to see my sister Jessie.  These were the summer days; but when the harvest season came round, and our crop of oats had to be gathered in, and, later still, our turnips stored away for the winter, I was then always busy with my work, and very seldom had opportunity of speaking with Thora, or of even seeing her from a distance.

And yet I had often a wish to be near her, and to show her what kindness or sympathy a lad can show to a girl whom he believes to have but little happiness in life.  For the treatment that Thora received at her home was becoming day by day more severe.