The young man told his shameful story.  He had got into gay, dissipated ways, and to meet a sudden demand had taken three pounds from his employer for just once.  But the three pounds had swollen into sixteen, and finding it impossible to replace it, he had taken ten more and fled, hoping to hide in the hills till he could get rowed off to some passing ship and escape to America.  He had no friends, and neither father nor mother.  At mention of this fact, David’s face relaxed.

“Puir lad!” he muttered.  “Nae father, and nae mother, ’specially; that’s a awfu’ drawback.”

“You may give me up if you like, Mr. Scott.  I don’t care much; I’ve been a wretched fellow for many a week; I am most broken-hearted to-day.”

“It’s not David Scott that will make himself hard to a broken heart, when God in heaven has promised to listen to it.  I’ll tell you what I will do.  You shall gie me all the money you have, every shilling; it’s nane o’ yours, ye ken that weel; and I’ll take it to your master, and get him to pass by the ither till you can earn it.  I’ve got a son, a decent, hard-working lad, who’s daft to learn your trade—­bookkeeping.  Ye sail stay wi’ me till he kens a’ the ins and outs o’ it, then I’ll gie ye twenty pounds.  I ken weel this is a big sum, and it will make a big hole in my little book at the Ayr Bank, but it will set Archie up.

“Then when ye have earned it, ye can pay back all you have stolen, forbye having four pounds left for a nest-egg to start again wi’.  I dinna often treat mysel’ to such a bit o’ charity as this, and, ’deed, if I get na mair thanks fra heaven, than I seem like to get fra you, there ’ud be meikle use in it,” for Alexander Semple had heard the proposal with a dour and thankless face, far from encouraging to the good man who made it.  It did not suit that youth to work all summer in order to pay back what he had come to regard as “off his mind;” to denude himself of every shilling, and be entirely dependent on the sternly just man before him.  Yet what could he do?  He was fully in David’s power; so he signified his assent, and sullenly enough gave up the L9 14s. 2d. in his possession.

“I’m a good bookkeeper, Mr. Scott,” he said; “the bargain is fair enough for you.”

“I ken Donald Nevin; he’s a Campletown man, and I ken you wouldna hae keepit his books if you hadna had your business at your finger-ends.”

The next day David went to Glasgow, and saw Mr. Semple’s master.  The L9 odd was lost money found, and predisposed him to the arrangement proposed.  David got little encouragement from Mr. Nevin, however; he acknowledged the clerk’s skill in accounts, but he was conceited of his appearance, ambitious of being a fashionable man, had weak principles and was intensely selfish.  David almost repented him of his kindness, and counted grudgingly the shillings that the journey and the carriage of Mr. Semple’s trunks cost him.