"I know what ye ha' done," said Jamie simply. "I ha' made it guid; but ye must go."
St. Clair's bravado collapsed before Jamie's directness.
"The two hundred dollars ye took," said Jamie.
"Two hundred dollars? I took? Old man, you're crazy."
"I tell ye I ha' made it guid," said Jamie.
"Made it good? I could do that myself, if--if"--
"Perhaps ye'll be having the money about ye now?" said Jamie. "Can ye give it me?"
St. Clair abandoned pretense. Perhaps curiosity overcame him, or his morning nerves were not so good as Jamie's. "Of course I'll get the money. I lent it to a friend. But how did you ever know the d----d business was short?"
Jamie looked at him sadly. This was the man he had hoped to make a man of business. "Mon, why didn't ye ask me for it? Do ye suppose they didna count their money the nicht?"
"You're so d----d mean!" swore St. Clair. "Have you told my wife?"
"Ye'll not be telling Mercy?" gasped Jamie, unmindful of the result. "I have told no one."
"I'll make it all right with the teller, then," said the other.
"Ye'll na be going back to the bank!" cried Jamie.
"Not go back? Do you suppose I can't be trusted with a matter of two hundred dollars?"
"Ye'll not be going back to the bank!" said Jamie firmly. "Ye'll be taking Mr. Bowdoin's money next."
"If it weren't for the teller--He's not a gentleman, and last week I was fool enough to tell him so. Did the teller find it out?"
"Then I'll tell Sadie it's all your fault," said David.
Poor Jamie knocked his pipe against the doorstep and sighed. The other went upstairs.
It was some days after this that old Mr. Bowdoin came down town, one morning, in a particularly good humor. To begin with, he had effected with unusual success a practical joke on his auguster spouse. Then, he had gone home the night before with a bad cold; but (having given a family dinner in celebration of his wife's birthday and the return to Boston of his grandson Harley, and confined himself religiously to dry champagne) he had arisen quite cured. But at the counting-room he was met by son James with a face as long as the parting glass of whiskey and water he had sent him home with at eleven the previous evening. "James Bowdoin, at your time of life you should not take Scotch whiskey after madeira," said he.