"Warm household lights are shining out His rugged channel o'er. Ill plants of malice, and guile, and doubts Ne'er blossom on his shore. There is Peace in her matron's gown and hood. Her footsteps never roam, And Hope is in pleasant neighborhood And strength is strongest at home Thy foot is weary, thy cheek is wan, Come to thy kindred, wayfaring man "Oran's ringing voice he hears, The great sea waves among, To yon far shore the ripple bears The Oran's kindly tongue. Yet he labors on, and travels far, For years of toil must glide, Before he sees the even star Rise calm on Oranside. Speed thy labor o'er land and sea, Home and kindred are waiting for thee! "The gentle hours fall soft, the brightest days, Like autumn leaves upon the forest ways, Fade from our sight. And night and day he labors as he can, Far from home's kindly light. His foot is weary, and his cheek is wan, Ah! pray, young hearts, for the sad wayfaring man Laboring this night." The air was very simple beginning and ending in a low pathetic strain, and with a quicker measure for the intervening verses--but the music was but a soft chiming breath, bearing along the words. Archibald Sutherland leaned his head upon his hands, the burden floating dizzily through his mind. Alas! for him, beginning his wayfaring so painfully, neither home nor kindred waited. He heard a step approach--a hand gently open the door of communication, and raised his head, a sad calmness possessing him.--Among the gay hearts, divided from him only by that wall, there might be some one, whose prayer of gentle pity, would indeed rise for the wayfaring man. CHAPTER IX. Anne Ross was seated near Mrs. Catherine's piano when Alice Aytoun took her place at it timidly, and placing a sheet of manuscript music before her, began her song. Anne started in tremulous wonder as it commenced. Most strange to hear these words repeated by a living voice at all--stranger still that they should fall from Alice Aytoun's. With breathless interest she listened as the lines flowed on. The wayfaring man in toil, and danger, and sorrow, hearing in the ripple of the great sea, far away in some strange country, the kindly call of the Oran to home and kindred. Her cheeks grew pale--her lips quivered. How could this be twined into Norman's history?--or was Alice unconsciously murmuring out the low, sad prayer of its conclusion for her father's murderer?