was all the little
story of his life.

His salary was eighteen hundred dollars; at the end of the first year
after his theft he had spent a hundred and fifty. Then he asked for
two days' leave of absence, and went to New York, where he exchanged
sixteen hundred and forty dollars for Spanish gold pieces. A less
old-fashioned man would have invested the money at six per cent, but
Jamie could not forego the satisfaction of restoring the actual gold.
Coming back, he opened the old chest, now empty, one day, after hours,
and put the pieces in the box. The naked gold made a shining roll in
its blackness, just reaching across the lower end; and poor Jamie felt
the first thrill of--not happiness, but something that was not sorrow
nor shame. And then he pulled down the old ledger, and made the first
entry on the Dr. side: "Restored by James McMurtagh, June 9, 1849,
$1640." The other ten dollars had gone for his journey to New York.

And that night, as he went home, he looked about him. He bowed (in his
queer way) to one or two acquaintances who passed him, unconscious
that he had been cutting them for a year. Before supper he went in to
see John Hughson, carrying his pipe, and, without waiting to be
offered it, asked to borrow a pinch of tobacco against the morrow,
when he should buy some. The good Hughson was delighted, pressed a
slab of "plug" upon him, and begged him to stay and have something
liquid with his pipe. But Jamie would not; he was anxious to be alone.

His little bedroom gave upon the roof of the adjoining house in the
rear; and here his neighbor kept a few red geraniums in boxes, and it
was Jamie's privilege to smoke his pipe among them. So this evening,
after a hasty meal, he hurried up there. Beyond the roofs of the
higher houses was a radiant golden sky, and in it the point of a
crescent moon, and even as Jamie was lighting his pipe one star came.

Old Jamie breathed hard and sighed, and the sigh meant rest. He took a
pleasure in the tobacco, in the look of the sky again.

And with this throb of returning life, in one great pulsation, his
love rushed back to his heart, and he thought of Mercedes.... He sat
up nearly all the night, and with the first light of dawn he wrote to
her.

II.

But Jamie got no answer to his letter, and he wrote again. Again he
got no answer; and he wrote a third time, this time by registered
mail; so that he got back a card, with her name signed to the receipt.

Jami