“After that we said very little.  We sat at opposite sides of the fire, waiting for him, and you played on the floor.  The harvesters trooped by, and there was a fiddle; and when it stopped, long stillness, and then a step.  It was not Adam.  You fell asleep, and we could hear nothing but the sea.  There was a harvest moon.

“Once a dog ran past the door, and we both rose.  Margaret pressed her hands on her breast.  Sometimes she looked furtively at me, and I knew her thoughts.  To me it was only misery that had come, but to her it was shame, so that when you woke and climbed into her lap she shivered at your touch.  I could not look at her after that, for there was a horror of me growing in her face.

“Ten o’clock struck, and then again there was no sound but the sea pouring itself out on the beach.  It was long after this, when to me there was still no other sound, that Margaret screamed, and you hid behind her.  Then I heard it.

“‘Gavin,’ Margaret said to me, ‘be a good man all your life.’

“It was louder now, and then it stopped.  Above the wash of the sea we heard another sound—­a sharp tap, tap.  You said, ’I know what sound that is; it’s a man knocking the ashes out of his pipe against his boot.’

“Then the dog pushed the door off the latch, and Adam lurched in.  He was not drunk, but he brought the smell of drink into the room with him.  He was grinning like one bringing rare news, and before she could shrink back or I could strike him he had Margaret in his arms.

“‘Lord, lass,’ he said, with many jovial oaths, ’to think I’m back again!  There, she’s swounded.  What folks be women, to be sure.’

“’We thought you were dead, Adam,” she said, coming to.

’"Bless your blue eyes,” he answered gleefully; ’often I says to myself, “Meggy will be thinking I’m with the fishes,” and then I chuckles.’

“‘Where have you been all this time?’ I demanded sternly.

“‘Gavin,’ he said effusively, ’your hand.  And don’t look so feared, man; I bear no malice for what you’ve done.  I heard all about it at the Cross Anchors.’

“‘Where have you been these five years and a half?’ I repeated.

“‘Where have I no been, lad?’ he replied.

“‘At Harvie,’ I said.

“‘Right you are,’ said he good-naturedly.  ’Meggie, I had no intention of leaving you that day, though I was yawning myself to death in Harvie; but I sees a whaler, and I thinks, “That’s a tidy boat, and I’m a tidy man, and if they’ll take me and the dog, off we go."’

“‘You never wrote to me,’ Margaret said.”

‘"I meant to send you some scrapes,’ he answered, ’but it wasna till I changed ships that I had the chance, and then I minds, “Meggy kens I’m no hand with the pen.”  But I swear I often thought of you, lass; and look you here, that’s better than letters, and so is that, and every penny of it is yours.’”

“He flung two bags of gold upon the table, and their chink brought you out from behind your mother.