are going away? All I can do for you--all I have shall be yours!"

"What has David done? I know he has done something"--

"Nothing--nothing is wrong, dear; I assure you"--

"Then why are you so hard to him? Why will you not put the money in
the business?"

Jamie was holding her hand. "My little Mercy," said he, "my little
lady. Forgive me--do you forgive me?"

Mercedes looked at him, coldly perhaps.

"For the love of God, do not look like that! In the world or out of
it, there's none I care for but just you, dear." Then Mercedes began
to cry again, and kissed him. "And as for the money, dear, he'll have
it as soon as I find the business is a decent one."

VIII.

Of course they had the money, and in some months the people at the
bank began to hear fine accounts of St. Clair's doings in New York.
Not so much, perhaps, from Jamie as from one or two other clerks to
whom St. Clair had taken the trouble to write a letter or two. As for
Jamie, he went back to live in the little house on Salem Street.

All the same, he grew thin and older-looking. He did not pretend to
take the same interest in his work. Many and grave were the talks the
two Bowdoins, father and son, had about him. The first few weeks after
the departure of the St. Clairs, they feared actually for his life.
He seemed to waste away. Then, one week, he went on to New York
himself, and after that grew better. This was when he carried on to
St. Clair the money coming from the sale of the house. Up to that time
he had had no letter from Mercedes, though he wrote her every week.

He took care to place the money in Mercedes' name as special capital.
But the other two men seemed to be active, progressive fellows. They
reposed confidence in St. Clair, and they had always known him. After
all, the old man tried to think, the qualities required to keep moneys
separate were not those that went best to make it, and stock-broking
was suited to a gambler as a business. For Jamie shared intensely the
respectable prejudices against stock-broking of the elders of that
day.

After this, he occasionally got letters from his Mercedes. They came
addressed to the bank (as if she never liked to recognize that he was
back in Salem Street), and it grew to be quite a joke among the other
clerks to watch for them; for they had noticed their effect on Jamie,
and they soon learned to identify the handwriting which made him beam
so that half the wrinkles went, and the