Although she had climbed the stairs so slowly, poor Swanhild was still out of breath when she reached the door leading into the little parlor; she paused a moment to recover herself, and, hearing voices within, became a degree more miserable, for she had counted upon finding Frithiof alone. Clearly Sigrid must also have returned, and, indeed, things were even worse than that, for as she opened the door and emerged round the Japanese screen she saw Roy standing by the fire; for this she had been utterly unprepared, and, indeed, it was very seldom that he came now to the model lodgings.

“At last!” exclaimed Frithiof, “why, Swanhild, where on earth have you been to? We were just thinking of having you cried.”

“We were preparing an advertisement to appear in all the papers to-morrow morning,” said Roy, laughing, “and were just trying to agree as to the description; you’ll hardly believe me, but your guardian hadn’t the least notion what color your eyes are.”

Frithiof drew her toward him, smiling.

“Let me see now in case she is ever lost again,” he said, but noticing a suspicious moisture in the blue eyes he no longer teased her, but made her sit down on his knee and drew off her gloves.

“What is the matter, dear?” he said, “you look cold and tired; where have you been to?”

“I have been to see Mr. Osmond,” said Swanhild, “you know we often go to his church, Sigrid and I, and there was something I wanted to ask him about. Last summer I made a promise which I think was wrong, and I wanted to know whether I might break it.”

“What did he say?” asked Frithiof, while Sigrid and Roy listened in silent astonishment.

“He said that a wrong promise ought to be broken, and he managed to get me leave to speak from the person to whom I made the promise. And now I am going to tell you about it.”

Frithiof could feel how the poor little thing was trembling.

“Don’t be frightened, darling,” he said, “just tell us everything and no one shall interrupt you.”

She gave his hand a grateful little squeeze and went on.

“It happened just after we had come back from the sea last June. I was coming home from school on Saturday morning when, just outside the court-yard, I met Lady Romiaux. Just for a moment I did not know her, but she knew me directly, and stopped me and said how she had met you and Sigrid at a party and had ever since been so miserable to think that we were so poor, and somehow she had found out our address, and wanted to know all about us, only when she actually got to the door she did not like to come in. And she said she was so glad to see me, and asked all sorts of questions, and when she heard that you meant to pay off the debts she looked so sad, and she said that the bankruptcy was all her fault, and she asked how much I thought you had got toward it, and seemed quite horrified to think what a little it was, and what years the work would take. And then she said to me that she wanted to help, too, just a little, only that you must never know, and she thought I could easily pay in a five-pound note to your account at the bank, she said, without your knowing anything about it. She made me promise to do it secretly, and never to tell that it was from her. You can’t think how kindly she said it all, and how dreadfully sad she looked—I don’t think I could possibly have said ‘no’ to her. But afterward I began to see that I couldn’t very well pay the note into your account at the post-office, for I hadn’t got your little book that you always take, and besides I didn’t know which office you went to. So I worried about it all the next day, which was Sunday, and in the evening at church it suddenly came into my head that I would put it with your other money inside your waistcoat pocket.” Roy made an involuntary movement, Sigrid drew a little nearer, but Frithiof never stirred. Swanhild continued:

“So the next morning, when I went into your bedroom to wake you up, I slipped the note into your pocket, and then I thought, just supposing you were to lose it, it seemed so light and so thin, and I pinned it to the lining to make it quite safe. You were sleeping very soundly, and were quite hard to wake up. At first I felt pretty happy about it, and I thought if you asked me if I had put it there when you found it out I should be able to say ‘yes’ and yet to keep Blanche’s secret. But you never said a word about it, and I was sure something had troubled you very much, and I was afraid it must be that, yet dared not speak about it and I tried to find out from Sigrid, but she only said that you had many troubles which I was too young to understand. It often made me very unhappy, but I never quite understood that I had done wrong till the night you found me reading the paper, and then I thought that I ought not to have made the promise to Lady Romiaux. This is the note which Mr. Osmond brought me from her.”

Frithiof took the little crumpled sheet and read it.

“Dear Swanhild: You are quite free to speak about that five-pound note, I never ought to have made you promise secrecy, and indeed, gave the money just by a sudden impulse. It was a foolish thing to do, as I see now, but I meant it well. I hope you will all forgive me. Yours affectionately,

Then Roy and Sigrid read the note together, and Roy grasped Frithiof’s hand.

“Will you ever forgive me?” he said. “Cecil was right, and I ought to have known that this miserable affair would one day be explained.”

Frithiof still looked half-stunned, he could not realize that the cloud had at last dispersed, he was so taken up with the thought of the extraordinary explanation of the mystery—of the childish, silly, little plan that had brought about such strange results.

“Oh, Swanhild!” cried Sigrid, “if only you had spoken sooner how much pain might have been saved.”

“Don’t say that,” said Frithiof, rousing himself, “she has chosen the right time, depend upon it. I can hardly believe it at all yet. But, oh! to think of having one’s honor once more unstained—and this death in life over!”

“What do you mean? What do you mean?” sobbed poor little Swanhild, utterly perplexed by the way in which her confession had been received.

“Tell her,” said Sigrid, glancing at Roy.

So he told her exactly what had happened in the shop on that Monday in June.

“We kept it from you,” said Frithiof, “because I liked to feel that there was at any rate one person unharmed by my disgrace, and because you seemed so young to be troubled with such things.”

“But how can it have happened?” said Swanhild; “who took the note really from the till?”

“It must have been Darnell,” said Roy. “He was present when Sardoni got the change, he saw James Horner put away the note, he must have managed during the time that you two were alone in the shop to take it out, and no doubt if he had been searched first the other five-pound note would have been found on him. What a blackguard the man must be to have let you suffer for him! I’ll have the truth out of him before I’m a day older.”

“Oh! Frithiof, Frithiof! I’m so dreadfully sorry,” sobbed poor Swanhild. “I thought it would have helped you, and it has done nothing but harm.”

But Frithiof stooped down and silenced her with a kiss “You see the harm it has done,” he said, “but you don’t see the good. Come, stop crying, and let us have tea, for your news has given me an appetite, and I’m sure you are tired and hungry after all this.”

“But could it ever have entered any one’s head that such an improbable thing should actually happen?” said Roy, as he mused over the story. “To think that Sardoni should get change for his note, and Darnell steal it on the very day that Swanhild had given you that unlucky contribution to the debt-fund!”

“It is just one of those extraordinary coincidences which do happen in life,” said Sigrid. “I believe if every one could be induced to tell all the strange things of the kind that had happened we should see that they are after all pretty common things.”

“I wonder if there is a train to Plymouth to-night?” said Roy. “I shall not rest till I have seen Darnell. For nothing less than his confession signed and sealed will satisfy James Horner. Do you happen to have a Bradshaw?”

“No, but we have something better,” said Sigrid, smiling; “on the next landing there is Owen, one of the Great Western guards. I know he is at home, for I passed him just now on the stairs, and he will tell you about the trains.”

“What a thing it is to live in model lodgings!” said Roy, smiling. “You seem to me to keep all the professions on the premises. Come, Frithiof, do go and interview this guard and ask him how soon I can get down to Plymouth and back again.”

Frithiof went out, there was still a strange look of abstraction in his face. “I scarcely realized before how much he had felt this,” said Roy. “What a fool I was to be so positive that my own view of the case was right! Looking at it from my own point of view I couldn’t realize how humiliating it must all have been to him—how exasperating to know that you were in the right yet not to be able to convince any one.”

“It has been like a great weight on him all through the autumn,” said Sigrid, “and yet I know what he meant when he told Swanhild, that it had done him good as well as harm. Don’t you remember how at one time he cared for nothing but clearing off the debts? Well, now, though he works hard at that, yet he cares for other people’s troubles too—that is no longer his one idea.”

And then because she knew that Roy was thinking of the hope that this change had brought into their lives, and because her cheeks grew provokingly hot, she talked fast and continuously, afraid to face her own thoughts, yet all the time conscious of such happiness as she had not known for many months.

Before long Frithiof returned.

“I don’t think you can do it,” he said. “Owen tells me there is a train from Paddington at 9.50 this evening, but it isn’t a direct one and you wont get to Plymouth till 9.28 to-morrow morning. A most unconscionable time, you see.”

“Why not write to Darnell?” suggested Sigrid.

“No, no, he would get out of it in some mean way. I intend to pounce on him unexpectedly, and in that way to get at the truth,” replied Roy. “This train will do very well. I shall sleep on the way, but I must just go to Regent Street and get the fellow’s address.”

This, however, Frithiof was able to tell him, and they lingered long over the tea-table, till at length Roy remembered that it might be as well to see his father and let him know what had happened before starting for Devonshire. Very reluctantly he left the little parlor, but he took away with him the grateful pressure of Sigrid’s hand, the sweet, bright glance of her blue eyes, and the echo of her last words, spoken softly and sweetly in her native language.

“Farvel! Tak skal De have.” (Farewell! Thanks you shall have.) Why had she spoken to him in Norse? Was it perhaps because she wished him to feel that he was no foreigner, but one of themselves? Whatever her reason, it touched him and pleased him that she had spoken just in that way, and it was with a very light heart that he made his way to Rowan Tree House.

The lamp was not lighted in the drawing-room, but there was a blazing fire, and on the hearth-rug sat Cecil with Lance nestled close to her, listening with all his ears to one of the hero stories which she always told him on Sunday evenings.

“Has father gone to chapel?” asked Roy.

“Yes, some time ago,” replied Cecil. “Is anything the matter?”

Something told her that Roy’s unexpected appearance was connected with Frithiof, and, accustomed always to fear for him, her heart almost stood still.

“Don’t look so frightened,” said Roy, as the firelight showed him her dilated eyes. “Nothing is the matter—I have brought home some very good news. Frithiof is cleared, and that wretched business of the five-pound note fully explained.”

“At last!” she exclaimed. “What a relief! But how? Do tell me all.”

He repeated Swanhild’s story, and then, hoping to catch his father in the vestry before the service began, he hurried off, leaving Cecil to the only companionship she could have borne in her great happiness—that of little Lance.

But Roy found himself too late to catch his father, there was nothing for it but to wait, and, anxious to speak to him at the earliest opportunity, he made his way into the chapel that he might get hold of him when the service was over, for otherwise there was no saying how long he might not linger talking with the other deacons, who invariably wanted to ask his advice about a hundred and one things.

He was at this moment giving out the hymn, and Roy liked to hear him do this once more; it carried him back to his boyhood—to the times when there had been no difference of opinion between them. He sighed just a little, for there is a sadness in all division because it reminds us that we are still in the days of school-time, that life is as yet imperfect, and that by different ways, not as we should wish all in the same way, we are being trained and fitted for a perfect unity elsewhere.

Mr. Boniface was one of those men who are everywhere the same; he carried his own atmosphere about with him, and sitting now in the deacon’s seat beneath the pulpit he looked precisely as he did in his home or in his shop. It was the same quiet dignity, that was noticeable in him, the same kindly spirit, the same delightful freedom from all self-importance. One could hardly look at him without remembering the fine old saying, “A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman.”

When, by and by, he listened to Roy’s story, told graphically enough as they walked home together, his regret for having misjudged Frithiof was unbounded. He was almost as impatient to get hold of Darnell as his son was.

“Still,” he observed, “you will not gain much by going to-night, why not start to-morrow by the first train?”

“If I go now,” said Roy, “I shall be home quite early to-morrow evening, and Tuesday is Christmas eve—a wretched day for traveling. Besides, I can’t wait.”

Both father and mother knew well enough that it was the thought of Sigrid that had lent him wings, and Mr. Boniface said no more, only stipulating that he should be just and generous to the offender.

“Don’t visit your own annoyance on him, and don’t speak too hotly,” he said. “Promise him that he shall not be prosecuted or robbed of his character if only he will make full confession, and see what it was that led him to do such a thing, I can’t at all understand it. He always seemed to me a most steady, respectable man.”

Roy being young and having suffered severely himself through Darnell’s wrong-doing, felt anything but judicial as he traveled westward on that cold December night; he vowed that horsewhipping would be too good for such a scoundrel, and rehearsed interviews in which his attack was brilliant and Darnell’s defense most feeble. Then he dozed a little, dreamed of Sigrid, woke cold and depressed to find that he must change carriages at Bristol, and finally after many vicissitudes was landed at Plymouth at half-past nine on a damp and cheerless winter morning.

Now that he was actually there he began to dislike the thought of the work before him, and to doubt whether after all his attack would be as brilliant in reality as in imagination. Rather dismally he made a hasty breakfast and then set off through the wet, dingy streets to the shop where Darnell was at present employed. To his relief he found that it was not a very large one, and, on entering, discovered the man he sought, behind the counter and quite alone. As he approached him he watched his face keenly; Darnell was a rather good-looking man, dark, pale, eminently respectable; he looked up civilly at the supposed customer,—then, catching sight of Roy, he turned a shade paler and gave an involuntary start of surprise.

“Mr. Robert!” he stammered.

“Yes, Darnell; I see you know what I have come for,” said Roy quietly. “It was certainly a very strange, a most extraordinary coincidence that Mr. Falck should, unknown to himself, have had another five-pound note in his pocket that day last June, but it has been fully explained. Now I want your explanation.”

“Sir!” gasped Darnell; “I don’t understand you; I—I am at a loss—”

“Come, don’t tell any more lies about it,” said Roy impatiently. “We knew now that you must have taken it, for no one else was present. Only confess the truth and you shall not be prosecuted; you shall not lose your situation here. What induced you to do it?”

“Don’t be hard on me, sir,” stammered the man. “I assure you I’ve bitterly regretted it many a time.”

“Then why did you not make a clean breast of it to my father?” said Roy. “You might have known that he would never be hard on you.”

“I wish I had,” said Darnell, in great distress; “I wish to God I had, sir, for it’s been a miserable business from first to last. But I was in debt, and there was nothing but ruin before me, and I thought of my wife who was ill, and I knew that the disgrace would kill her.”

“So you went and disgraced yourself still more,” said Roy hotly. “You tried to ruin another man instead of yourself.”

“But he wasn’t turned off,” said Darnell. “And they put it all on his illness, and it seemed as if, after all, it would not hurt him so much. It was a great temptation, and when I had once given way to it there seemed no turning back.”

“Tell me just how you took it,” said Roy, getting rather more calm and judicial in his manner.

“I saw Mr. Horner give Signor Sardoni the change, sir, and I saw him put the note in the till; and I was just desperate with being in debt and not knowing how to get straight again.”

“But wait a minute—how had you got into such difficulties?” interrupted Roy. “And how could a five-pound note help you out again?”

“Well, sir, I had been unlucky in a betting transaction, but I thought I could right myself if only I could get something to try again with; but there wasn’t a soul I could borrow from. I thought I should get straight again at once if only I had five pounds in hand, and so I did, sir; I was on my feet again the very next day.”

“I might have known it was betting that had ruined you,” said Roy. “Now go back and tell me when you took the note.”

“I kept on thinking and planning through the afternoon, sir, and then, presently, all was quiet, and only Mr. Falck with me in the shop, and I was just wondering how to get rid of him, when Mr. Horner opened the door of Mr. Boniface’s room and called to me. Then I said, ‘Do go, Mr. Falck, for I have an order to write to catch the post.’ And he went for me, and I hurried across to his counter while he was gone, and took the note out of his till and put it inside my boot; and when he came back he found me writing at my desk just as he had left me. He came up looking a little put out, as if Mr. Horner had rubbed him the wrong way, and he says to me, ‘It’s no use; you must go yourself, after all.’ So I went to Mr. Horner, leaving Mr. Falck alone in the shop.”

“Were you not afraid lest he should open the till and find out that the note was gone?”

“Yes, I was very much afraid. But all went well, and I intended to go out quickly at tea-time—it was close upon it then—and do what I could to get it straight again. I thought I could invent an excuse for not returning to the shop that night; say I’d been taken suddenly ill or something of that sort. It was Mr. Falck’s turn to go first; and while he was out, as ill-luck would have it, Mr. Horner came to take change from the till, and then all the row began. I made sure I was ruined, and no one was more surprised than myself at the turn that affairs took.”

“But,” exclaimed Roy, “when you were once more out of debt, how was it that you did not confess, and do what you could to make up for your shameful conduct?”

“Well, sir, I hadn’t the courage. Sometimes I thought I would; and then, again, I couldn’t make up my mind to; and I got to hate Mr. Falck, and I hated him more because he behaved well about it; and I got into the way of spiting him and making the place disagreeable to him; and I hoped that he would leave. But he stuck to his post through it all; and I began to think that it would be safer that I should leave, for I felt afraid of him somehow. So at Michaelmas I took this situation. And oh! sir, for my wife’s sake don’t ruin me; don’t expose all this to my employer!”

“I promised you just now that you should not be exposed; but you must write a few words of confession to my father; and be quick about it, for I want to catch the express to London.”

Darnell, who was still pale and agitated, seized pen and paper, and wrote a few words of apology and a clear confession. To write was hard, but he was in such terror lest his employers should return and discover his miserable secret that he dared not hesitate—dared not beat about the bush.

Roy watched him with some curiosity, wondering now that he had not suspected the man sooner. But, as a matter of fact, Darnell had been perfectly self-possessed until his guilt was discovered; it was the exposure that filled him with shame and confusion, not the actual dishonesty.

“I don’t know how to thank you enough, sir, for your leniency,” he said, when he had written, in as few words as possible, the statement of the facts.

“Well, just let the affair be a lesson to you,” said Roy. “There’s a great deal said about drunkenness being the national sin, but I believe it is betting that is at the root of half the evils of the day. Fortunately, things are now set straight as far as may be, yet remember that you have wronged and perhaps irrevocably injured a perfectly innocent man.”

“I bitterly regret it, sir; I do, indeed,” said Darnell.

“I hope you do,” said Roy; “I am sure you ought to.”

And while Darnell still reiterated thanks, and apologies, and abject regrets, Roy stalked out of the shop and made his way back to the station.

“To think that I believed in that cur, and doubted Falck!” he said to himself with disgust. “And yet, could any one have seemed more respectable than Darnell? more thoroughly trustworthy? And how could I disbelieve the evidence that was so dead against Frithiof? Sigrid and Cecil trusted him, and I ought to have done so too, I suppose; but women seem to me to have a faculty for that sort of thing which we are quite without.”

Then, after a time, he remembered that the last barrier that parted him from Sigrid was broken down; and it was just as well that he had the railway carriage to himself, for he began to sing so jubilantly that the people in the next compartment took him for a school-boy returning for his Christmas holidays.

It had been arranged that if he could catch the express from Plymouth he should meet his father at the shop, and arriving at Paddington at half-past six he sprang into a hansom and drove as quickly as possible to Regent Street.

Frithiof just glanced at him inquiringly as he passed through the shop, then, reassured by the expression of his face, turned once more to the fidgety and impatient singing-master who, for the last quarter of an hour, had been keeping him hard at work in hunting up every conceivable song that was difficult to find, and which, when found, was sure to prove unsatisfactory.

He wondered much what had passed at Plymouth, and when at last he had got rid of his customer, Roy returned to the shop with such evident excitement and triumph in his manner that old Foster thought he must be taking leave of his senses.

“My father wants to speak to you, Frithiof,” he said.

And Frithiof followed him into the little inner room which had been the scene of such disagreeable interviews in the past. A strange, dreamlike feeling came over him as he recalled the wretched summer day when the detective had searched him, and in horrible, bewildered misery he had seen the five-pound note, lying on that same leather-covered table, an inexplicable mystery and a damning evidence against him.

But visions of the past faded as Mr. Boniface grasped his hand. “How can I ever apologize enough to you, Frithiof!” he said. “Roy has brought back a full confession from Darnell, and the mystery is entirely cleared up. You must forgive me for the explanation of the affair that I was content with last summer—I can’t tell you how I regret all that you have had to suffer.”

“Here is Darnell’s letter,” said Roy, handing it to him.

And Frithiof read it eagerly, and asked the details of his friend’s visit to Plymouth.

“Will this satisfy Mr. Horner, do you think?” he said, when Roy had told him all about his interview with Darnell.

“It cannot fail to convince every one,” said Mr. Boniface. “It is proof positive that you are free from all blame and that we owe you every possible apology and reparation.”

“You think that Mr. Horner will be content, and will really sign the fresh deed of partnership?” said Frithiof.

“He will be forced to see that your honor is entirely vindicated,” said Mr. Boniface. “But I shall not renew the offer of partnership to him. He has behaved very ill to you, he has been insolent to me, and I am glad that, as far as business goes, our connection is at an end. All that is quite settled. And now we have a proposal to make to you. We want you, if nothing better has turned up, to accept a junior partnership in our firm.”

Frithiof was so staggered by the unexpectedness of this offer that for a moment or two he could not say a word.

“You are very good,” he said at length. “Far, far too good and kind to me. But how can I let you do so much for me—how can I let you take as partner a man who has no capital to bring into the business?”

“My dear boy, money is not the only thing wanted in business,” said Mr. Boniface, laying his hand on Frithiof’s shoulder. “If you bring no capital with you bring good abilities, a great capacity for hard work, and a high sense of honor; and you will bring too, what I value very much—a keen sympathy with those employed by you, and a real knowledge of their position and its difficulties.”

“I dare not refuse your offer,” said Frithiof. “I can’t do anything but gratefully accept it, but I have done nothing to deserve such kindness from you.”

“It will be a comfort to me,” said Mr. Boniface, “to feel that Roy has some one with whom he can work comfortably. I am growing old, and shall not be sorry to do a little less, and to put some of my burden on to younger shoulders.”

And then, after entering a little more into detail as to the proposed plan, the three parted, and Frithiof hurried home eager to tell Sigrid and Swanhild of the great change that had some over their affairs.