“I heard it down at the harbor, Thyra.  Mike McCready’s vessel, the Nora Lee, was just in from the Magdalens.  Ches and Joe got capsized the night of the storm, but they hung on to their boat somehow, and at daybreak they were picked up by the Nora Lee, bound for Quebec.  But she was damaged by the storm and blown clear out of her course.  Had to put into the Magdalens for repairs, and has been there ever since.  The cable to the islands was out of order, and no vessels call there this time of year for mails.  If it hadn’t been an extra open season the Nora Lee wouldn’t have got away, but would have had to stay there till spring.  You never saw such rejoicing as there was this morning at the harbor, when the Nora Lee came in, flying flags at the mast head.”

“And Chester—­where is he?” demanded Thyra.

Carl and Cynthia looked at each other.

“Well, Thyra,” said the latter, “the fact is, he’s over there in our yard this blessed minute.  Carl brought him home from the harbor, but I wouldn’t let him come over until we had prepared you for it.  He’s waiting for you there.”

Thyra made a quick step in the direction of the gate.  Then she turned, with a little of the glow dying out of her face.

“No, there’s one has a better right to go to him first.  I can atone to him—­thank God, I can atone to him!”

She went into the house and called Damaris.  As the girl came down the stairs Thyra held out her hands with a wonderful light of joy and renunciation on her face.

“Damaris,” she said, “Chester has come back to us—­the sea has given him back to us.  He is over at Carl White’s house.  Go to him, my daughter, and bring him to me!”

XI.  THE EDUCATION OF BETTY

When Sara Currie married Jack Churchill I was broken-hearted...or believed myself to be so, which, in a boy of twenty-two, amounts to pretty much the same thing.  Not that I took the world into my confidence; that was never the Douglas way, and I held myself in honor bound to live up to the family traditions.  I thought, then, that nobody but Sara knew; but I dare say, now, that Jack knew it also, for I don’t think Sara could have helped telling him.  If he did know, however, he did not let me see that he did, and never insulted me by any implied sympathy; on the contrary, he asked me to be his best man.  Jack was always a thoroughbred.

I was best man.  Jack and I had always been bosom friends, and, although I had lost my sweetheart, I did not intend to lose my friend into the bargain.  Sara had made a wise choice, for Jack was twice the man I was; he had had to work for his living, which perhaps accounts for it.