A few weeks have passed away since that terrible night, and we are again in Christian Melville’s quiet home. It is on the eve of the new year, but how different is the appearance of those assembled within this still cheerful room from the mirth and happiness which made their faces shine one short twelvemonth since. Our Christian is here, sitting with her head bent down, and her hands clasped together with convulsive firmness. _Here_ is little Mary drooping by her side like a stricken flower, while the only other person in the apartment sits sulkily beside them with a discontented, ill-humoured look upon her pretty features, which contrasts strangely, and not at all agreeably, with the pale and anxious faces of her companions--her sisters--for this unhappy looking, discontented woman is James Melville’s wife. Strange and terrifying news of Halbert have reached them, “that he has fallen into errors most fatal and hazardous to his future prospects, and all unlike as of his proposed vocation so of his former character, that he had become acquainted and been seen publicly with most unfit and dangerous companions,” writes a kind and prudent Professor, who has from the first seen and appreciated the opening promise of Halbert’s mind. Two or three days ago James, his brother, has set off to see if these things be true or no, and to bring, if possible and if needful, the wandering erring spirit--we cannot call him prodigal yet--home. The spirit of Christian, the guardian sister, had sunk within her at these terrible tidings; was she not to blame--had she done her part as she ought to have done--had she not been careless--is she guiltless of this sad catastrophe? She remembered Halbert’s letter of the past new year--she remembered how studiously he had kept from home all this weary year--she remembered how, save for one hurried visit, he had stayed at a distance from them all, pleading engagements with his friend, that friend that had now proved so deadly a foe. A thousand things, unheeded at the time, sprung up in Christian’s memory in lines of fire. The friend of Halbert, free-thinking at the first, what was he? the unwonted restraint of the young brother’s correspondence, the studied omission of all reference to sacred things, or to his own prospective avocations in his letters, which in former times used to be the chief subjects of his glowing and hopeful anticipations, the bitterness of tone which had crept into his once playful irony, all these which had only caused a momentary uneasiness, because of her dependence on Halbert’s steadfast settled principles, flashed back with almost intolerable distinctness now. Alas! for Christian’s recollections--“I am to blame; yes, I ought to have warned him, even gone to him,” she thinks; “was he not left me as a precious treasure, to be guarded, to be warned, to be shielded from ill? Oh! that he was home once more.” Alas! for Christian’s recollections, we