This was the invariable conclusion of these evening colloquies. And Janet went “ben” to her kitchen and then to the garden door, and “cried upon” Andrew, still conversing with the pony in the stable. And then there was a great turning of keys and drawing of bolts, and the house was closed up for the night. And finally the pair went into the parlour, where Mrs Ogilvy, with her clear little educated voice read “the chapter,” usually from one of the Gospels, and read in sequence night by night. Janet was of opinion that she never understood so well as when her mistress read, and indeed Mrs Ogilvy had a little pride in her reading, which was very clear and distinct with its broad vowels. The little prayer which was read out of a book did not please Andrew so much, who was of opinion that prayers ought never to be previously invented and written, but come, as he said, “straught from the hairt.” He had himself indeed thought on occasion that he could have poured forth the sentiments that moved the family with more unction and expression than was in the sometimes faltering voice and pause for breath which affected his mistress when she read these “cauld words out of a book”; but Andrew knew his own place: or if he did not know, Janet did. What was there to catch the breath, and make the voice falter, in the printed words and amid all that deep calm of waning life? It was at the prayer for the absent that Mrs Ogilvy for fifteen years past had always broken down. Nay, not broken down: she was too deeply sensible that to make an exhibition of private feeling while leading the family devotions would have been irreverent and unseemly, but she was not capable of going on quite smoothly without a pause over that petition, “Those who are absent of this family, be Thou with them to bless them, and bring them home in Thy good time if it be Thy blessed will.” Every night there came to Janet’s eyes as she knelt a secret tear; and every night it seemed to Andrew that if he might speak “straught from the hairt” instead of that cauld prayer that was printed, the Lord would hear. I need not say that even in a Scotch book of domestic worship the words were varied from day to day, but the meaning was always the same. They left the mistress of the house in a certain commotion of mind when her old servants had bidden her good night and withdrawn. She had a way then of walking about the room, sometimes pausing as if to listen. There was deep silence about the Hewan, uplifted on its little brae, and with few houses near,--nothing to be heard except the distant murmur of the Esk, and the rustling of the trees. But the night has strange mysteries of sound for which no one can account. Sometimes something came that seemed like a step on the gravel outside, sometimes, fainter in the distance, what might have been the swing of the gate, sometimes a muffled knock as at the door. She knew them all well, and had been deceived by them a