"I wonder what they are doing at home now!" he exclaimed, looking thoughtfully into the coals. "It's just a year ago to-day that I left. I can't imagine them living in the new house. It's always the old sitting-room I see when I think of them. Mack is probably down on the hearth-rug, popping corn or roasting apples, and Flip's curled up in the chimney-seat, telling him stories. And Aunt Eunice--I know what she's doing; what she always does Sunday evening just at this time, when the twilight begins to fall. She has gone into her room and shut the door and knelt down by the big red rocking-chair that we used to be rocked to sleep in. And she's praying for us this very minute, and doesn't know that the dust is half an inch thick on my Bible, and that a prayer hasn't passed my lips since last February. Dear old Aunt Eunice!" An ache clutched his throat as he thought of her, and a tender mood, such as he had not known for weeks, rushed warm across him. One after another the old scenes rose up before him, until an overwhelming longing to see the well-known faces made the homesick tears start to his eyes. The twilight shadows deepened in the room, but, lost in the rush of tender memories, he forgot everything save the pictures that seemed to rise before him out of the glowing embers in the grate. In the midst of his reverie, there was a noise on the stairs--a familiar noise, although he had not heard it for months, a tread and a double tap, as if a foot and two canes were coming up the steps. "Old Jimmy Scott!" thought Alec, looking round as if awakening from a dream and discovering that the room was nearly dark; he stirred the fire until it burst into cheerful flames. "Well!" he exclaimed, cordially, throwing open the door in answer to old Jimmy's knock, "of all people! Did you rain down? Here I sat in the dumps, feeling that I hadn't a friend in the town. Come in! Come in!" He pulled a chair hospitably toward the grate for his guest, and put another lump of coal on the fire. "Knew you'd be surprised to see me a day like this," said the old soldier, thrusting his foot toward the blaze; "but I've been intending to look you up for some time. Kind o' had a drawing in this direction. Thinks I, when I felt it, wonder if he's sick and needs me. When I have feelings like that, I usually pay attention to 'em."