It must be allowed that Captain Thorkald was a very ordinary lord for a woman like Margaret Sinclair to “love, honor and obey;” but few men would have been worthy of her, and the usual rule which shows us the noblest women marrying men manifestly their inferiors is doubtless a wise one.

A lofty soul can have no higher mission than to help upward one upon a lower plane, and surely Captain Thorkald, being, as the dominie said, “no that bad,” had the fairest opportunities to grow to Margaret’s stature in Margaret’s atmosphere.

While these things were occurring, Ronald got Margaret’s letter.  It was full of love and praise, and had no word of blame or complaint in it.  He noticed, indeed, that she still signed her name “Sinclair,” and that she never alluded to Captain Thorkald, and the supposition that the stain on his character had caused a rupture did, for a moment, force itself upon his notice; but he put it instantly away with the reflection that “Thorkald was but a poor fellow, after all, and quite unworthy of his sister.”

The very next mail-day he received the dominie’s letter.  He read it once, and could hardly take it in; read it again and again, until his lips blanched, and his whole countenance changed.  In that moment he saw Ronald Sinclair for the first time in his life.  Without a word, he left his business, went to his house and locked himself in his own room.

Then Margaret’s silent money began to speak. In low upbraidings it showed him the lonely girl in that desolate land trying to make her own bread, deserted of lover and friends, robbed of her property and good name, silently suffering every extremity, never reproaching him once, not even thinking it necessary to tell him of her sufferings, or to count their cost unto him.

What is this bitterness we call remorse?  This agony of the soul in all its senses?  This sudden flood of intolerable light in the dark places of our hearts?  This truth-telling voice which leaves us without a particle of our self-complacency?  For many days Ronald could find no words to speak but these, “O, wretched man that I am!”

But at length the Comforter came as swiftly and surely and mysteriously as the accuser had come, and once more that miracle of grace was renewed—­“that day Jesus was guest in the house of one who was a sinner.”

Margaret’s “silent money” now found a thousand tongues.  It spoke in many a little feeble church that Ronald Sinclair held in his arms until it was strong enough to stand alone.  It spoke in schools and colleges and hospitals, in many a sorrowful home and to many a lonely, struggling heart—­and at this very day it has echoes that reach from the far West to the lonely islands beyond the stormy Pentland Firth, and the sea-shattering precipices of Duncansbay Head.

It is not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer’s trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso—­the old town of Thor—­for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall.  It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and is called “The Margaret Sinclair.”