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."
JUST WHAT HE DESERVED.
There is not in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of
Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown
ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir. The
Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about
Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large
quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep feed, and
far-stretching pastures where the red and white cows ruminate. The
patient processes of nature breed patient minds; the gray cold climate
can be read in the faces of the people, and in their hearts the seasons
take root and grow; so that they have a grave character, passive, yet
enduring; strong to feel and strong to act when the time is full ready
for action.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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