To this frugal Arcadean maid it seemed a large sum, but she hoped by the sacrifice to clear off Ronald’s college debts, and thus enable him to start his new race unweighted.  It was but a mouthful to each creditor, but it put them off for a time, and Ronald was not a youth inclined to “take thought” for their “to-morrow.”

He had been entered for four years’ study with the firm of Wilkes & Brechen, writers and conveyancers, of the city of Glasgow.  Her father had paid the whole fee down, and placed in the Western Bank to his credit four hundred pounds for his four years’ support.  Whatever Ronald thought of the provision, Peter considered it a magnificent income, and it had cost him a great struggle to give up at once, and for no evident return, so much of his hard-earned gold.  To Ronald he said nothing of this reluctance; he simply put vouchers for both transactions in his hand, and asked him to “try an’ spend the siller as weel as it had been earned.”

But to Margaret he fretted not a little.  “Fourteen hun’red pounds a’ thegither, dawtie,” he said in a tearful voice.  “I warked early an’ late through mony a year for it; an’ it is gane a’ at once, though I hae naught but words an’ promises for it.  I ken, Margaret, that I am an auld farrant trader, but I’se aye say that it is a bad well into which are must put water.”

When Ronald went, the summer went too.  It became necessary to remove at once to their rock-built house in one of the narrow streets of Kirkwall.  Margaret was glad of the change; her father could come into the little parlor behind the shop any time in the day and smoke his pipe beside her.  He needed this consolation sorely; his son’s conduct had grieved him far more deeply than he would allow, and Margaret often saw him gazing southward over the stormy Pentland Frith with a very mournful face.

But a good heart soon breaks bad fortune and Peter had a good heart, sound and sweet and true to his fellow-creatures and full of faith in God.  It is true that his creed was of the very strictest and sternest; but men are always better than their theology and Margaret knew from the Scriptures chosen for their household worship that in the depth and stillness of his soul his human fatherhood had anchored fast to the fatherhood of God.

Arcadean winters are long and dreary, but no one need much pity the Arcadeans; they have learned how to make them the very festival of social life.  And, in spite of her anxiety about Ronald, Margaret thoroughly enjoyed this one—­perhaps the more because Captain Olave Thorkald spent two months of it with them in Kirkwall.  There had been a long attachment between the young soldier and Margaret; and having obtained his commission, he had come to ask also for the public recognition of their engagement.  Margaret was rarely beautiful and rarely happy, and she carried with a charming and kindly grace the full cup of her felicity.  The Arcadeans love to date from a good year, and all her life afterward Margaret reckoned events from this pleasant winter.