For many weeks, his spirit, like a tired bird, had hovered between this world and the next, uncertain where to alight.
For many weeks he had been, as we call it, out of his head. Harley had had time to go to New Orleans and return, Mercedes and Soto to die, and all these meetings about less important things to happen at the bank; and still old Jamie"s body lay in the little house in Salem Street, his mind far wandering. But in all his sixty years of gray life, up to then, I doubt if his soul had been so happy. Dare we even say it was less real? Old Mr. Bowdoin laid the chest beside the door, and listened.
For Jamie was wandering with Mercedes under sunny skies; and now, for many days, his ravings had not been of money or of this world"s duty, but only of her. It had been so from about the time she must have died; dare one suppose he knew it? So his mind was still with her.
The doctors, though, were very anxious for his mind, still wandering.
If his body returned to life, they feared that his mind would not.
But the Bowdoins and little Sarah sat and watched there.
It came that morning,--it was late in May; so calmly that for some moments they did not notice it,--old Mr. Bowdoin and the little girl.
Jamie opened his eyes to look out on this world again so naturally that they did not see that he had waked; only he lay there, looking out of the window, and puzzling at a blossom that was on a tree below; for he remembered, when he had gone to sleep the night before, it was March weather, and the snow lay on the ground. The snow lay thick upon the ground as he was walking to the station. How could spring have come in a night? Where was--What world was this?
For his eyes traveled down the room to where, sitting at the foot of his bed to be the first to be seen by him, Jamie saw his little girl as he remembered her.
Mr. Bowdoin started as the look of seeing came back to Jamie"s eyes.
But the little girl, as she had been told to do, ran forward and took the old clerk"s hand.
It was very quiet in the room. Old Mr. Bowdoin dared not speak; he sat there rubbing his spectacles.
But old Jamie had looked up to her, and said only, "Mercedes!"
XVI.
Jamie did come back to the bank--once. It was on a day some weeks after this, when he was well. He had been well enough even for one more journey to New York; the Bowdoins did not thwart him. And Mercedes--Sadie--was at his home; so now he came to get possession of his ward"s little fortune, to be duly invested in his name as trustee, in the stock of the Old Colony Bank. He came in one morning, and all the bookkeepers greeted him; and then he went into the safe, where he found the box as usual; for Mr. Bowdoin, knowing that he would come, had taken it back.
When he came out, the chest was under his arm; and he went to old Mr.
Bowdoin, alone in his private room. "Here is the chest, sir, I must ask you to count it." And before Mr. Bowdoin could answer he had turned the lock, so the lid sprang open. There, almost filling the box, were rows of coin, shining rows of gold.
Old Mr. Bowdoin"s eyes glistened. "Jamie, why should I count it?" he said gently. "It is yours now, and you alone can receipt for it, as Sarah"s legal guardian."
"I would have ye ken, sir, that the firm o" James Bowdoin"s Sons ha"
duly performed their trust."
And old Mr. Bowdoin said no more, but counted the coins, one by one, to the full number the ledger showed.
He did not look at the other page. But Jamie was not one to tear a leaf from a ledger. No one ever looked at the old book again; but the honest entries stand there still upon the page. Only now there is another: "Restored in full, June 26, 1862."