Margaret Sinclair's Silent Money

"It was ma luck, Sinclair, an' I couldna win by it."

"Ha'vers! It was David Vedder's whiskey that turned ma boat
tapsalteerie, Geordie Twatt."

"Thou had better blame Hacon; he turned the boat _Widdershins_ an' what
fule doesna ken that it is evil luck to go contrarie to the sun?"

"It is waur luck to have a drunken, superstitious pilot. Twatt, that
Norse blood i' thy veins is o'er full o' freets. Fear God, an' mind thy
wark, an' thou needna speir o' the sun what gate to turn the boat."

"My Norse blood willna stand ony Scot stirring it up, Sinclair. I come
o' a mighty kind--"

"Tush, man! Mules mak' an unco' full about their ancestors having been
horses. It has come to this, Geordie: thou must be laird o' theesel'
before I'll trust thee again with ony craft o' mine." Then Peter
Sinclair lifted his papers, and, looking the discharged sailor steadily
in the face, bid him "go on his penitentials an' think things o'er a
bit."

Geordie Twatt went sullenly out, but Peter was rather pleased with
himself; he believed that he had done his duty in a satisfactory manner.
And if a man was in a good temper with himself, it was just the kind of
even to increase his satisfaction. The gray old town of Kirkwall lay in
supernatural glory, the wondrous beauty of the mellow gloaming blending
with soft green and rosy-red spears of light that shot from east to
west, or charged upward to the zenith. The great herring fleet outside
the harbor was as motionless as "a painted _fleet_ upon a painted
ocean"--the men were sleeping or smoking upon the piers--not a foot fell
upon the flagged streets, and the only murmur of sound was round the
public fountains, where a few women were perched on the bowl's edge,
knitting and gossiping.

Peter Sinclair was, perhaps, not a man inclined to analyze such things,
but they had their influence over him; for, as he drifted slowly home in
his skiff, he began to pity Geordie's four motherless babies, and to
wonder if he had been as patient with him as he might have been. "An'
yet," he murmured, "there's the loss on the goods, an' the loss o' time,
and the boat to steek afresh forbye the danger to life! Na, na, I'm no
called upon to put life i' peril for a glass o' whiskey."

Then he lifted his head, and there, on the white sands, stood his
daughter Margaret. He was conscious of a great thrill of pride as he
looked at her, for Margaret Sinclair, even among the beautiful women of
the Orcades, was most beautiful of all. In a few minutes he had fastened
his skiff at a little jetty, and was walking with her over the springy
heath toward a very pretty house of white stone. It