The bank had thoroughly respected Peter Sinclair, and his daughter's earnest, decided offer won their ready sympathy. It was accepted without any question of interest, though she could not hope to clear off the obligation in less than nine years. She did not go near any of her old acquaintances; she had no heart to bear their questions and condolences, and she had no money to stay in Glasgow at charges. Winter was coming on rapidly, but before it broke over the lonely islands she had reached her cottage in Stromness again.
There had been, of course, much talk concerning her hasty journey, but no one had suspected its cause. Indeed, the pursuit after Ronald had been entirely the bank's affair, had been committed to private detectives and had not been nearly so hot as the frightened criminal believed. His failure and flight had indeed been noticed in the Glasgow newspapers, but this information did not reach Kirkwall until the following spring, and then in a very indefinite form.
About a week after her return, Geordie Twatt came into port. Margaret frequently went to his cottage with food or clothing for the children, and she contrived to meet him there.
"Yon lad is a' right, indeed is he," he said, with an assumption of indifference.
"A ship going westward took him off the boat."
"Thank God! You will say naught at all, Geordie?"
"I ken naught at a' save that his father's son was i' trouble, an' trying to gie thae weary, unchancy lawyers the go-by. I was fain eneuch mesel' to balk them."
But Margaret's real trials were all yet to come. The mere fact of doing a noble deed does not absolve one often from very mean and petty consequences. Before the winter was half over she had found out how rapid is the descent from good report. The neighbors were deeply offended at her for giving up the social tea parties and evening gatherings that had made the house of Sinclair popular for more than one generation. She gave still greater offence by becoming a workingwoman, and spending her days in braiding straw into the (once) famous Orkney Tuscans, and her long evenings in the manufacture of those delicate knitted goods peculiar to the country.
It was not alone that they grudged her the money for these labors, as so much out of their own pockets--they grudged her also the time; for they had been long accustomed to rely on Margaret Sinclair for their children's garments, for nursing the sick and for help in weddings, funerals and all the other extraordinary occasions of sympathy among a primitively social people.