Throughout these dark days she had purposely and pointedly kept apart from her old friend Dr. Ogilvie, for she feared his influence over her might tempt her to confidence. Latterly the doctor had humored her evident desire, but he had never ceased to watch over and, in a great measure, to believe in her; and, when he heard of this determination to quit Orkney forever, he came to Stromness with a resolution to spare no efforts to win her confidence.
He spoke very solemnly and tenderly to her, reminded her of her father's generosity and good gifts to the church and the poor, and said: "O, Margaret, dear lass! what good at a' will thy silent money do thee in _that Day_? It ought to speak for thee out o' the mouths o' the sorrowfu' an' the needy, the widows an' the fatherless--indeed it ought. And thou hast gien naught for thy Master's sake these three years! I'm fair 'shamed to think thou bears sae kind a name as thy father's."
What could Margaret do? She broke into passionate sobbing, and, when the good old man left the cottage an hour afterward there was a strange light on his face, and he walked and looked as if he had come from some interview that had set him for a little space still nearer to the angels. Margaret had now one true friend, and in a few days after this she rented her cottage and went to live with the dominie. Nothing could have so effectually reinstated her in public opinion; wherever the dominie went on a message of help or kindness Margaret went with him. She fell gradually into a quieter but still more affectionate regard--the aged, the sick and the little children clung to her hands, and she was comforted.
Her life seemed, indeed, to have wonderfully narrowed, but when the tide is fairly out, it begins to turn again. In the fifth year of her poverty there was from various causes, such an increase in the value of real estate, that her rents were nearly doubled, and by the end of the seventh year she had paid the last shilling of her assumed debt, and was again an independent woman.
It might be two years after this that she one day received a letter that filled her with joy and amazement. It contained a check for her whole nine hundred pounds back again. "The bank had just received from Ronald Sinclair, of San Francisco, the whole amount due it, with the most satisfactory acknowledgment and interest." It was a few minutes before Margaret could take in all the joy this news promised her; but when she did, the calm, well-regulated girl had never been so near committing extravagances.