The first week of the new year was past: the next day little Alice was to return home. They were all sitting in Mrs. Catherine's inner drawing-room, about her cheerful tea-table--Mrs. Catherine herself, Alice, Anne, Archibald, and Lewis. The spirits of the young people had risen; they were all hopeful, courageous, and conversing with that intimate and familiar kindliness which unites so much more closely and tenderly on the eve of a parting than at any other time. Alice was to sing to them--to sing as Anne and Archibald begged--that song of the 'Oran' which had moved them so deeply on the night of the new year. The sweet young voice had grown more expressive since that time; the gentle, youthful spirit had passed through greater vicissitudes in that week than in all its previous bright lifetime, and, therefore, the song was better rendered--its tinge of sadness--its warm breath of hope-- "Ah, pray, young hearts, for the sad wayfaring man!" Anne met Archibald's eyes with a supplicating glance in them as the melody ended. Her own were wet with sympathetic tears. Yes, for him who must count so many years of toil before he could see the evening star rise calm on the home-waves of Oran, she echoed the prayer, but more deeply, and with a thrill of still devouter earnestness, for that exiled brother who already had borne the burden of the long laborious day, so far from home and all its comforts, so far from hope and honor. Alice sang again, a pretty little pastoral song of the district, which was a favorite with Lewis. He was leaning over her chair, and Anne, approaching Mrs. Catherine, took the opportunity of asking her about this ballad--whether it really had any connexion with Norman, or was but linked to him, by her own fancy. "It is Norman's song," said Mrs. Catherine. "Ye know, child, that I like ballads that have the breath of life in them. Langsyne, Norman left that with me; the author of it was some student lad about Redheugh, that he liked well, and it has lain bye me ever since. I desired the bairn Alison to learn it. I am an auld fuil to heed such bairnly things, child; but it pleased me to hear her father's daughter singing that. There was a kind of forgiveness and peace in it to the memory of the unhappy callant.--It was a foolish fancy, was it not, for an auld wife? But silence! let us hear her."