rmed ship left, with its
freight of one negro, its company of marines and squad of marshals.
Among them St. Clair stood on the lower deck and looked at Jamie. The
poor clerk hung his head as if he were the guilty one. And in the
silence was heard the voice of a minister in prayer. The little group
of citizens gathered around him with bared heads. He prayed for the
poor slave and for the recreant republic, for peace, and that no
slave-hunter should again tread quietly the soil of Massachusetts. But
Jamie heard him not. He was thinking over again the old trouble: how
he could not take his salary--that was needed for restitution; how he
could not ask the Bowdoins, or they would wonder where his salary had
gone.

As he turned his steps backward to the city, he wondered if St. Clair
was still living with her. But yes, he must be, or she would surely
have come back to him. A hand was laid upon his shoulder; he looked
up; it was the minister who had been upon the wharf.

"Be not cast down, old man. 'In his service is perfect freedom,'"
quoted the minister. He fancied he was one of the Abolitionist group
that had followed Anthony Burns to the last. But Jamie only looked up
blankly. He was thinking that in four years more he might go to bring
back Mercedes.

VII.

Year followed year. This was the twelfth year since Jamie had begun to
make up his theft from his own salary; but it had been slower work
than he had hoped, for he now had to pay almost a collector's price to
get the Spanish gold. He had hurried home one night eagerly, to count
his money; for he made his annual purchase and payment in June.
Sixteen hundred dollars in bills he had (it was curious that he kept
it now in money, and had no longer a deposit in the bank), and he
congratulated himself that he had not had the money at the wharf that
day: he might have given it to St. Clair, to learn Mercedes'
whereabouts; and it would not have reached her, and St. Clair would
have lied to him; while the taking of a dollar more than was
rightfully the bank's--for so Jamie regarded his salary--would really
make him a defaulter.

For the old chest was getting so full now that the clerk could almost
hold his head up among men. The next year, but three rows of gold coin
remained to fill. The smaller coins had all been purchased long ago.
And Jamie (who had only thought to do this, and die, at the first) now
began, timidly, to let his imagination go beyond the restitu