He wiped the tears away and tried to think. He looked around the old vault, where so much money, idle money, money of dead people, lay mouldering away; and not one dollar of it to save his little girl.
Then his eye fell on the old box on the upper shelf. A hanged pirate's money! He drew the box down; the key still was on his bunch; he opened the chest. There the gold pieces lay in their canvas bag; no one had thought of them for almost twenty years. Now, as a thought struck him, he took down some old ledgers, ledgers of the old firm of James Bowdoin's Sons, that had been placed there for safe-keeping. He opened one after another hurriedly; then, getting the right one, he came out into the light, and, finding the index, turned to the page containing this entry:--
June 24, 1829: To account of whom it may concern (eagles, pistoles & doubloons) $16,897.00
He dipped his pen in ink, and with a firm hand wrote opposite:--
June 22, 1848. By money stolen by James McMurtagh, to be accounted for $16,897.00
Then the old clerk drew a line across the account, returned the ledger to its place in the safe, and locked the heavy iron doors. The canvas bag was in his hands; the chest he had put back, empty.
The customer of St. Clair's firm was paid off, the partnership was dissolved without scandal, and the St. Clairs went to live in New Orleans. Jamie occupied one room in the attic of the old house in Salem Street. He wrote no more letters to Mercedes: he did not feel that he was worthy now to write to her. And a year or two after her arrival in New Orleans her letters ceased. She had thanked Jamie sorrowfully when he had paid over the money in New York, and kissed him with her pale lips (though his face was still paler), and upon the memory of this he had lived. But he had fancied her lips wore a new line; their curves had gone; and her eyes had certainly new depth.
When Mercedes ceased to write, Jamie did not complain. He knew well what the trouble was, and that her husband wished her to write to him for more money. But he could do no more for her. And after this his hope was tired, and Jamie hardly had the wish to write. The only link between them now was his prayer at night. The dry old Scotchman had come to prayer at last, for her if not for himself.