Folded in the twilight, Earth lay as still and peaceful as if she had never done any wrong, never seen anything wrong in one of her children. There was light everywhere, and darkness everywhere to make it strange. A pale green gleam prevailed in the heavens, as if the world were a glow-worm that sent abroad its home-born radiance into space, and coloured the sky. In the green light rested a few small solid clouds with sharp edges, and almost an assertion of repose. Throughout the night it would be no darker! The sun seemed already to have begun to rise, only he would be all night about it. From the door she saw the point of the Horn clear against the green sky: Steenie would be up there soon! he was hurrying thither! Sometimes he went very leisurely, stopping and gazing, or sitting down to meditate: he would not do so that night! A special solemnity in his countenance made her sure that he would go straight to his new house. But she could walk faster than he, and would not be long behind him! The sky was full of pale stars, and Kirsty amused herself, as she went, with arranging them--not into their constellations, though she knew the shapes and names of most of them, but into mathematical figures. The only star Steenie knew by name was the pole star, which, however, he always called _The bonny man’s lantern_. Kirsty believed he had thoughts of his own about many another, and a name for it too. She had climbed the hill, and was drawing near the house, when she was startled by a sound of something like singing, and stopped to listen. She had never heard Steenie attempt to sing, and the very thought of his doing so moved her greatly: she was always expecting something marvellous to show itself in him. She drew nearer. It was not singing, but it was something like it, or something trying to be like it--a succession of broken, harsh, imperfect sounds, with here and there a tone of brief sweetness. She thought she perceived in it an attempt at melody, but the many notes that refused to be made, prevented her from finding the melody intended, or the melody, rather, after which he was feeling. The broken music ceased suddenly, and a different kind of sound succeeded. She went yet nearer. He could not be reading: she had tried to teach him to read, but the genuine effort he put forth to learn made his head ache, and his eyes feel wild, he said, and she at once gave up the endeavour. When she reached the door, she could plainly hear him praying. He had been accustomed to hear his father pray--always extempore. To the Scot’s mind it is a perplexity how prayer and reading should ever seem one. Kirsty went a little deeper into the matter when she said:-- ‘The things that I want, I ken; and I maun hae them! There’s nae necessity ava to tell me what I want. The buik may wauk a sense o’ want, I daur say, I dinna ken, but it maistly pits intil me the thoucht o’ something a body micht weel want, withoot makin me awaur o’ wantin ’t at that preceese moment.’